Review 
43 
REVIEW 
Practical Plant Biochemistry By Muriel Wheldale Onslow. 
(Cambridge University Press, 1920.) pp. i + 178. Price 15s. 
The author, who is well known from her previous book, The Anthocyan 
Pigments of Plants, points out in the preface that the volume is compiled 
primarily for students of Botany who have some knowledge of Organic 
Chemistry. Its title might suggest that it is solely a laboratory manual, but, 
in fact, it combines in a very useful way a small text-book of plant chemistry 
with directions for numerous practical exercises. There are ten chapters, of 
which six deal with the chief classes of chemical compounds to be found in 
plants, namely, carbohydrates, fats and lipases, aromatic compounds and 
oxidising enzymes, proteins and proteases, glucosides and glucoside-splitting 
enzymes, and the plant bases, the last chapter being a very useful addition. 
There are, besides, an introductory chapter, and chapters on the colloidal 
state and on enzyme-action, and also a chapter on carbon-assimilation which 
includes a useful resume of the chemistry of chlorophyll. Here and there we 
find a brief discussion of a few physiological problems such as those of the 
first formed sugar of the green leaf, and of the synthesis of fats, and a short 
but useful list of references is appended to each chapter. It is satisfactory to 
find in the chapter on carbohydrates a short account of the pentosans, the 
importance of which in succulent plants is being more and more recognised. 
In this chapter, however, mention might have been made of all the sugars 
which are referred to later in connexion with the splitting of glucosides. The 
statement, also, that “all these structural elements [of the plant] can be trans¬ 
lated into terms of chemical compounds ” seems to savour more of expectation 
than of present-day realisation. The colloidal state and enzyme-action are 
somewhat cavalierly treated and the references to surface action are almost 
too brief to be helpful; these two chapters might usefully be expanded in a 
later edition. These minor criticisms apart, the book is certainly a marked 
success, and the author is to be congratulated on an introduction to plant 
biochemistry which is interesting, clear and compact, and which for the first 
time makes the subject easily accessible to the average botanist. The practical 
instructions given should also help to improve in universities the quality of 
the laboratory work in plant biochemistry. 
V. H. B. 
THE ANGLO-AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
FOR CENTRAL EUROPE 
I T is now well known that the scientific men of Central Europe 
are severely handicapped in their efforts to obtain scientific 
literature from foreign countries owing to their poverty and to the 
very unfavourable rates of currency exchange. An organisation has 
been formed to establish libraries for Central Europe from which 
books and papers are to be distributed to the university professors 
and teachers who require them. Eight centres of distribution have 
