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ANALYSES OF BOOKS. 
A Treatise on the Distillation of Coal Tar and of Ammoniacal 
Liquor , and the Separation from them of Valuable Products . 
By George Lunge, Ph.D., F.C.S., Professor of Technical 
Chemistry in the Federal Polytechnic School, Zurich. 
London : Van Voorst. 
With the exception of a treatise published by the author, in the 
German language, as far back as 1867, and which is necessarily 
to a great extent out of date, the work before us is the first sys- 
tematic and complete monograph on one of the most important 
branches of chemical manufactures. 
The author possesses special qualifications and advantages for 
the task which he has undertaken. He is not merely an able 
and learned scientific chemist, but he has had most extensive 
practical acquaintance with chemical manufactures in general, 
and with this branch in particular. Thus he is, unlike some 
otherwise very eminent scientific men, fully competent to judge 
of the coal-tar industry from a commercial point of view. As a 
special preliminary for the compilation of this monograph he has 
not merely made a thorough study of the literature of the subject, 
but he has taken the opportunity to supplement his own expe- 
rience by personal observations in a series of the largest and 
best tar- and ammonia-works in England, France, and Germany. 
He has also been aided by Mr. Watson Smith, formerly his 
assistant at the Zurich Polytechnicum, and now Professor of 
Chemical Technology at Owens College, Manchester, a chemist 
well versed in the treatment of coal-tar products, and by Dr. C. 
Meymott Tidy. 
The resulting work must be pronounced in every way worthy 
of the high reputation of the author, and calculated to be of the 
greatest service to the chemical profession, as well as to all 
persons concerned in the management of tar- and ammonia- 
works. 
One limitation must be noted in the outset. Dr. Lunge does 
not undertake — what, indeed, within the limits of a single volume 
would be utterly impossible — to discuss the manufacture of all 
the almost innumerable bodies known as coal-tar products. He 
treats merely of the compounds pre-existing in coal-tar, their 
separation and purification, not of their derivatives. Thus we 
find here instruction concerning benzol and anthracene, but 
nothing concerning the preparation of aniline from the former 
and of alizarine from the latter. 
