March 24, 190o.] 



SCIENCE. 



465 



lowed the next evening by a sumptuous 

 banquet at the Army and Navy Club, which 

 was attended by the Grand Dukes Con- 

 stantine and Peter, as well as by many 

 Russian officers and scientific men of high 

 rank. The Imperial Geographical and 

 Technical Societies held a joint session in 

 honor of their foreign guests, which was 

 followed by a supper. After a morning 

 spent at the Pawlowsk Meteorological Ob- 

 servatory, when a hallon-sonde and kites 

 were sent up from the aeronautical 

 grounds, the Military Aeronautical Park 

 was visited in the afternoon and here all 

 the apparatus of the balloon corps could be 

 inspected, including that Avhich its com- 

 mander. Colonel Kowandko, was about to 

 take to the seat of war in Manchuria. An- 

 other day was occupied by an excursion 

 into the Gulf of Finland on a small govern- 

 ment cruiser. Notwithstanding a gentle 

 wind, the light hemispherical kites of Mr. 

 Kusnetzof were easily raised by the motion 

 of the vessel and proved very stable. A 

 satisfactory demonstration was given of the 

 writer's apparatus to determine the true 

 and apparent wind on board. Salutes w'ere 

 exchanged with the Baltic fleet off Cron- 

 stadt, and this was only the second re- 

 minder that the country was at war, for no 

 evidence of it was apparent at St. Peters- 

 burg. After the close of the conference 

 there was an excursion to the Peterhof 

 palace, and on the following day some of 

 the guests were taken up in military bal- 

 loons, but, unfortunately, the chief object 

 of the ascension, a comparison of the dif- 

 ferent types of meteorological instruments, 

 failed on account of unfavorable weather. 



From the foregoing it is evident that the 

 proverbial Russian hospitality was limited 

 only by the brief time available. The 

 strongest impression left by this reunion 

 at St. Petersburg is a realization of the 

 earnest and widespread efforts that are 



being made to investigate the conditions of 

 the high atmosphere, and it may be con- 

 fidently predicted that still greater prog- 

 ress will have been achieved before the next 

 international conference is convened at 

 Rome in 1906. 



A. Lawrence Rotch. 

 Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, 

 February, 1905. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 



Food Inspection and Analysis: For the Use 

 of Public AnalystSj Health Officers, Sani- 

 tary Chemists and Food Economists. By 

 Albert E. Leach, B.S., Analyst of the 

 Massachusetts State Board of Plealth. New 

 York, John Wiley and Sons; London, Chap- 

 man and Hall, Ltd. Cloth, 10" x 6|". Pp. 

 xiv-|- 787; 278 figs. 



The foregoing title very well describes this 

 book written by one of America's analysts of 

 longest experience in this field of chemistry. 

 It is not a manual of food teclmology or of 

 food physiology, even to such extent as the 

 treatise of Konig and Dietrich. One chapter 

 is, indeed, entitled, ' Food, Its Functions, 

 Proximate Constituents and Nutritive Value,' 

 but it is given almost entirely to general defi- 

 nitions and classifications for the main groups 

 of food constituents. 



Neither is it a text-book of organic analysis. 

 Little space is given to the general principles 

 of determination for fundamental constituents 

 or to those of the construction and use of such 

 apparatus as the polariscope and microscope. 

 Other special treatises, such as volume three 

 of Wiley's ' Principles and Practise of Agri- 

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 LefTmann and Beam's small book on ' Food 

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 ciently developed to guide the amateur to the 

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 special reference to the particular operations 

 involved in this branch of food analysis. 



Food inspection, its principles and the pre- 

 cautions necessary in its conduct are ably, 

 though briefly, discussed. The care of samples 

 with reference to their identification when in- 



