Miscellaneous Intelligence. 483 



prospect not only of utilizing the natural supply, but also of 

 introducing and cultivating foreign species. 



No. 8 (193 pp.), by Elmer D. Merrill, gives a Dictionary of the 

 plant names of the Islands with the botanical equivalents. There 

 are two parts, in the first of which the local names and in the 

 second the botanical names are made the basis of the alphabetical 

 arrangement. 



III. Miscellaneous Scientific Intelligence. 



1. Wilhelm Ostwald ; by P. Walden. 8vo, pp. 120. Leipzig, 

 1904 (W. Engelmann, price 4 marks). — Last December the 

 friends and former students of Wilhelm Ostwald celebrated in 

 Leipsic the twenty-fifth year of his doctorate. A special volume 

 of the Zeitschrift fur physikalische Chemie was issued on the 

 occasion, and an account of Ostwald's life and work up to the 

 present time. The volume of the Zeitschrift, containing nearly 

 nine hundred pages, consists of contributions in German, English, 

 and French from over thirty of his former students, coming from 

 eight different countries. 



Walden's account of Ostwald's life and work is exceedingly 

 interesting and is told in a most entertaining manner. He was 

 well qualified to undertake the work as he studied with Ostwald 

 and is professor at Riga, where Ostwald was born and where he 

 was professor for six years. 



Ostwald was born in 1853, and as a boy and when first a stu- 

 dent at Dorpat he was not particularly forward in his studies. 

 When once started on his profession, however, his progress was 

 extraordinary. After taking his doctor's degree in December, 

 1878, he immediately became an instructor in Dorpat. Two 

 years later, in 1881, he was called to Riga as professor of chem- 

 istry, where he remained till 1887, and here in 1886 he received 

 his first foreign student, S. Arrhenius, who proposed the theory 

 of electrolytic dissociation the following year. He became pro- 

 fessor of physical chemistry in Leipsic in 1887, a position which 

 he still holds. 



The first volume of his great ' Lehrbuch der allgemeinen 

 Chemie ' appeared in 1885 and from that time forward his literary 

 work has been prodigious. He has written over twenty volumes 

 representing fifteen thousand pages, besides several thousand 

 reviews of scientific investigations and books. The Zeitschrift 

 was started chiefly by him in 1887 and he has been one of the 

 editors ever since. 



As a teacher, he has been remarkably successful. His labora- 

 tory at Leipsic has been the center for physical chemistry since 

 he took charge, and almost every branch of the subject has 

 received its share of attention. Students have come to him from 

 every civilized country. At the same time, he has carried on 

 many investigations of his own. h. w. f. 



