16 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
[July 2 , 1870. 
2 C 7 HgO H + 0 2 = 2 C 7 H 5 OHO. 
Hydride of benzoyl. Hydrate of benzoyl, 
or benzoic acid. 
Benzoic acid is never manufactured in this way, but 
the reaction is interesting and important. Benzoic 
acid is crystalline, volatile, very soluble in spirit and 
in alkaline solutions, but only slightly soluble in 
water. Cinnamic acid resembles it closely in this 
respect, but differs from it in giving a calcium salt, 
which is much less soluble in water than the benzo¬ 
ate, and also by this test. [§ Boiled with solution of 
bichromate of potash and sulphuric acid, it evolves 
an odour of hydride of benzoyl.] 
2 HC 9 H 7 0 2 + 5 0 2 
Cinnamic acid. 
= 2HC 7 H 5 0 + 2 H 2 0 + 4C0 2 . 
Benzoic hydride. 
Benzoic acid does not, under the same reagents, 
evolve any odour. 
Lecture Notes eor Chemical Students. By Edward 
Frankland, F.B.S., Professor of Chemistry in the 
Boyal School of Mines. Yol. I. Inorganic Chemistry. 
We arc very glad to welcome the reappearance of Dr. 
Frankland’s ‘Lecture Notes.’ Whatever may be the 
views of individual teachers on the question of chemical 
notation, and whatever may be the objection to the par¬ 
ticular system adopted in the present instance, a book 
which gives a really systematic form to the fragmentary 
and discursive snatches of commingled fact and theory 
hitherto found in most manuals, cannot but be acceptable 
to professors as well as to students. The chief object of the 
small volume before us, as explained in the preface, is to 
relieve the student from the task of making very copious 
notes in the lecture-theatre, and so allow him to concen¬ 
trate his attention upon the arguments and explanations 
of the speaker. Now it not only well fulfils this purpose, 
—a sufficiently useful one, when it is considered how rare 
among students is the art of making good notes such as 
will be afterwards serviceable in private,—but it gives a 
framework, the outline and connecting links of which 
stand out quite boldly through the scanty drapery of de¬ 
scription with which it is clothed. The description of 
the properties of the bodies treated of is almost entirely 
omitted, but on looking through the book it will be seen 
that all the reactions which serve to establish the relation¬ 
ship between the several members of any series of bodies, 
are brought into sufficient prominence, and every pains 
seems to have been taken to supply all the information 
required to back up the system of classification advocated. 
The arrangement of the matter is in accordance with 
the classification of the elements founded on their atomi¬ 
city or quantivalence; but this classification is presented 
in a judiciously modified form. The elements are ar¬ 
ranged as monads, dyads, etc., according to the number 
of atoms of hydrogen which their atoms are capable re¬ 
spectively of representing ; but the monads, for example, 
are subdivided into four subclasses or sections. The first 
contains hydrogen only. Even now that everybody 
quite believes, in the thoroughly metallic character of 
hydrogen, it is still necessary, considering its physical 
peculiarities and small atomic weight, to set it apart from 
the solid metals potassium, sodium, and silver. The 
second section of monads includes fluorine, chlorine, bro¬ 
mine, and iodine; the third comprises ciesium, rubi¬ 
dium, potassium, sodium, and lithium; the fourth, 
thallium and silver: and so on through six groups up to 
the hexads. One of the strange results of this sort of 
arrangement, however, is that we have to look for lead, 
which is. at least as closely related to thallium as any of 
the alkaline group, in the fourth column among the te¬ 
trads. Oxygen is, in like manner, dissociated from its 
kindred sulphur, aluminium from chromium and iron, 
copper from silver, zinc from cadmium. But of course, 
all these questions would be fully discussed in the lec¬ 
tures, of which these notes are but the skeleton. Such 
objections are moreover applicable to every scheme of 
classification which has hitherto been proposed. 
"We have to congratulate the learned author upon 
having laid aside in this his second edition, the greater 
part of the cumbrous and, to our mind, objectionable 
graphic formulae, with which the pages of his first edi¬ 
tion were so obtrusively overloaded. 
So much has been urged both for and against the em¬ 
ployment of this kind of notation in the pages of this 
Journal, as well as elsewhere, that it would be superflu¬ 
ous to reiterate those arguments. We would merely 
direct notice to the fact that either his opponents’ remon¬ 
strances, or the late discussion in the chemical world on 
the (we had almost said the late ) atomic theory, or possi¬ 
bly original considerations have certainly induced Dr. 
Frankland to think better of it, and expunge from his 
reprint the greater number of these intricate and inge¬ 
niously disposed patterns. A few, it is true, linger, but 
they are mere ghosts, which no one need be afraid of. 
And that no doubt may remain that Dr. Frankland has 
modified his teaching, if not his creed, we quote the first 
lines of his former volume, and set them side by side 
with the words he now writes. 
“ Definition .—Chemistry is the science which treats of 
the— 
1870. 
composition of all kinds of 
matter, and of those changes 
in composition which re¬ 
sult from the action, either 
of different kinds of matter 
upon each other, or of ex¬ 
ternal forces upon one and 
the same kind of matter.” 
We repeat, we congratulate him on this emendation, 
and, doing so, we feel satisfied that the book will prove 
as useful as we have every right to expect it to be, from 
its own intrinsic merits, and from the high standing of 
its distinguished author. W. A. T. 
atomic composition of bo¬ 
dies, and of those changes 
in matter which result from 
an alteration in the relative 
position of atoms. 
The Students’ Flora or the British Islands. By 
J. D. Hooker, C.B., M.D., D.C.L., LL.D., F.B.S., L.S., 
etc., Director of the Boyal Gardens, Kew. London: 
Macmillan and Co. 1870. Fcap. 8vo, pp. xx. 504. 
This book is, as might be expected from such an ac¬ 
complished botanist as Dr. Hooker, one which will un¬ 
doubtedly prove a most useful manual to students and 
others interested in the British Flora, and we may 
safely predict for it a wide and lasting success. Its 
object, as stated in the preface, is “to supply students 
and field botanists with a fuller account of the plants of 
the British Flora than the manuals hitherto in use aim 
at giving.” In it will be found, as the result of the au¬ 
thor’s well-known extensive acquaintance with plants of 
all parts of the world, a much broader and more philoso¬ 
phic idea of genera and species than we might have 
met with if the work had been written by one whose 
attention had been more exclusively restricted to the 
flora of so limited an area as our own. 
In the arrangement of the book the ‘ London Cata¬ 
logue’ of 1867 has been followed, and the well-known 
works of Syme and Watson have been freely consulted, 
but its great value arises from the fact that all the ordi¬ 
nal, generic, and specific characters of the plants have 
been rewritten by the author, and great care has been 
taken to render these descriptions as simple and perfect 
as possible. 
From pages i. to viii. we have an excellent preface, 
followed by (ix. to xx.) a “ Synopsis of the Natural Or¬ 
ders,” instead of the usual artificial key, Dr. Hooker re¬ 
marking that from experience he finds such artificial 
keys produce superficial habits amongst students; whilst 
