Chemistry and Physics, 469 



It appears that the use of this text-book would undoubtedly 

 furnish an excellent training for students in quantitative analy- 

 sis, but it seems to the reviewer that while the exercises in 

 volumetric analysis are satisfactory in number, the gravimetric 

 exercises for practice are rather inadequate in number and 

 variety for giving an entirely satisfactory course in this funda- 

 mental branch of the subject. There are only nine of these 

 gravimetric exercises, including the determination of only ten 

 elements. 



Like several recent books on quantitative analysis this one 

 should be criticized for advocating weighing by the use of long 

 swings of the balance beam, since this method is theoretically 

 less accurate and practically enormously more laborious than 

 by the use of very short swings across the center of the pointer- 

 scale. However, the author deserves praise for mentioning the 

 " usual method" of weighing and admitting that it is "suffi- 

 ciently accurate for ordinary analytical work," but his emphatic 

 statement that the "zero-point" of the unloaded balance should 

 be determined and "made use of" in each weighing is an 

 astonishing one in view of the facts that ordinary analytical 

 weighings are always made by difference and that the balance 

 with proper care will not change its point of equilibrium during 

 the time required to make the two weighings that are necessary 

 to obtain this difference. h. l. w. 



3. Richter's Organic Chemistry. Volume I., Chemistry of 

 Aliphatic Series. Translated by Percy E. Spielmann. Second 

 (Revised) Edition. 8vo, pp. 719. Philadelphia, 1919 (P. 

 Blakiston's Son & Co.). — This excellent and widely used, 

 advanced text-book has appeared in three American editions, 

 translated by Professor Edgar F. Smith of the University of 

 Pennsylvania. Afterwards, in 1915, was issued an English edi- 

 tion, of which the volume under consideration is a revision. 

 The changes that have been made in the present edition are 

 mainly corrections of errors in typography. h. l. w. 



4. Notes on Qualitative Analysis; by Louis Agassiz Test 

 and H. M. McLaughlin. 12mo, pp. 92. Boston, 1919 (Ginn 

 & Company). — This text-book has been prepared particularly 

 for the use of students in the special case where the subject is 

 taken up before general chemistry is completed. Therefore a 

 considerable amount of theoretical instruction bearing upon the 

 qualitative processes is presented. Thus, in the introduction, 

 solutions, equilibrium, reversible reactions, mass action, ioniza- 

 tion, solubility product, hydrolysis, etc., are clearly and simply 

 discussed, while throughout the book frequent explanations of 

 facts upon theoretical grounds are put forward. It may be 

 said that perhaps this attitude is carried somewhat too far, since 

 there is no doubt that facts are the fundamental things and 

 that theories have been derived from them — not facts from 

 theories. 



