1876.] Notices of Books. 115 
Pyrology , or Fire-Chemistry . By W. A . Ross. London : B. 
and F. N. Spon. 
It may, perhaps, be questioned whether chemical reactions 
produced in the dry way, and at temperatures ranging up to full 
redness, have been as thoroughly studied, whether for systematic 
or for analytical purposes, as the changes and decompositions 
occurring in the wet way at temperatures not ordinarily exceeding 
the boiling-point of water. We have, to be sure, pyro-chemical 
operations on the large scale in abundance. But have all the 
processes of the metallurgist, limited as they are in their objeCts, 
and in the number of bodies operated upon, been found capable of 
scientific explanation in accordance with received theories? We 
have, on the other hand, in blowpipe analysis, a body of methods 
by which the presence of most inorganic bodies may be detected 
with no less ease than precision. But without at all under- 
valuing the results of such men as Berzelius, Plattner, Forbes, 
and others, we may still ask whether the standard treatises on 
the use of the blowpipe include every operation by which the 
presence of elements or of their compounds “ can be discovered 
in the dry way?” This question Major Ross answers in the 
negative. Some time ago he communicated certain interesting 
papers to the “ Chemical News,” in which he made known a 
number of novelties which promise, at least, to be useful. 
Whether these new methods have been tested by mineralogists 
and chemists, and if so with what result, we are unable to say. 
We cannot lay our hands upon any memoir, English or foreign, 
in which they are criticised. Among these novelties, real or 
imaginary, are “ the vesiculation of borax with oxides dissolved 
in it, and the corresponding crystals, which form on the surface 
of the vesicle, laid on cotton in ordinarily moist atmosphere ; the 
vesiculation of boric acid containing alkaline traces, and the 
detection of potash in them by breathing on the vesicle; the 
violet colour given by cobalt oxide to phosphoric acid, and the 
means of thus quantitatively estimating alkalies, which turn blue 
in certain proportions ; spherospheres, or contained balls, formed 
by cobalt oxide in boric acid beads ; metallic-looking films formed 
over beads of boric and phosphoric acid held in a good hydro- 
carbonous pyrocone ; decolouration of cobalt with soda by arsenic 
acid ; delicate reactions of oxide of silver in phosphoric acid, by 
which it can be detected in most galenas; structure of pyrocones ; 
cobalt solution, reaction given by lime ; reactions of chlorine and 
fluorine ; curious reaction of soda in pyrophosphate of lime ; 
separation of substances, especially of metals in alloys, by utili- 
sing their different attractions for heat ; the use of aluminium 
plate as a support ; quantitative assay of sulphide of copper by 
oxide of lead in phosphoric acid ; separation of silica, alumina, 
ceria, and the alkaline earths, including didymia and lanthana, 
by means of their behaviour in boric acid ; quantitative determin- 
