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Elements of Chemistry ; including the actual state and prevalent 

 Doctrines of the Profession. By the late Edward Turner, 

 M.D., F.R.S., L. and E. Eighth edition. Edited by Baron 

 Liebig, Prof, of Chemistry in the University of Giessen, and 

 William Gregory, M.D., F.R.S.E., Prof, of Chemistry in the 

 University of Edinburgh. 



The fact that this excellent work has reached an eighth edition, 

 renders it scarcely necessary for us to do more than announce its 

 appearance. We lately noticed a re-puhlication of Professor Graham's 

 Elements ; and a new edition of Professor Brande's Manual of Che- 

 mistry is about to appear. Nothing, perhaps, shews more strikingly 

 the extensive diffusion of a taste for chemical pursuits among the 

 public and the profession, than this simultaneous demand for new 

 editions of the three standard English treatises on the science. 



The additions made to the subject of Inorganic Chemistry in the 

 volume before us do not appear to be very numerous. It is chiefly 

 in the department of Organic Chemistry that the progress of the 

 science is indicated in the present day ; and in their advertisement 

 the editors announce that many of the sections which are to appear 

 in the second volume have been entirely re-written. 



We are glad to perceive from the preface that the Continental 

 chemists are beginning to adopt the British system of equivalents or 

 atomic weights : i. e. by taking hydrogen as a standard of unity. 

 This fact appears to us to convey a warning to those English writers 

 on the science who have shewn a strong disposition to import the 

 Continental system into England rather for the sake of novelty, than 

 of effecting any important or useful change. We question the pro- 

 priety of the editors' doubling the equivalents of phosphorus, arsenic, 

 and antimony, in this edition : it will, we fear, have the effect of 

 producing great confusion in the minds of chemical students respect- 

 ing the atomic constitution of the compounds of these substances, 

 and will throw the work out of uniformity, not only with former 

 editions, but with other treatises on the science which have deserved- 

 ly acquired authority. Nevertheless, if the editors perform their 

 task of revision as satisfactorily in the Organic as in the Inorganic 

 branch of chemistry, there will be no reason to complain of these 

 slight innovations, and their labours will tend to maintain the cha- 

 racter of a work which, since it first issued from the hands of the 

 late Dr. Turner, has always enjoyed a high reputation. — Ibid. 



