346 
Reviews. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1898. 
and  will  necessarily  be  a  source  of  confusion  to  the  student,  when  he  sees  the 
red  negative  radical  situated  at  all  kinds  of  angular  distances  from  its  positive 
associate.  Besides,  it  is  a  pity  to  teach  a  beginner  the  dualistic  idea  in  nomen- 
clature, when  he  will  have  it  to  unlearn  if  he  ever  gets  at  the  foundation  of 
the  subject. 
Part  III  presents  definitions  of  such  general  terms  as  medicines,  drugs,  phar- 
macopoeia, pharmacy,  etc.,  and  one  chapter  consists  of  a  review  of  the  various 
classes  of  chemical  constituents  existing  in  plant  drugs. 
Part  IV  discusses  pharmacy  in  136  pages,  and  it  may  be  said  of  it,  as  of  each 
one  of  the  other  parts,  that  it  is  too  small  a  space  in  which  to  consider  such  a 
large  subject. 
There  are  on  the  market  now  a  number  of  series  of  books  under  the  general 
title  of  "aids,"  "  compends,"  etc.,  and,  if  we  leave  out  the  introduction  of  this 
book,  it  belongs  in  the  same  category  with  them.  It  is  just  such  a  work  as  the 
would-be  pharmacist  seizes  with  the  forlorn  hope  of  making  a  short  cut  into 
the  ranks  of  the  pharmaceutical  profession  without  an  education.  He  will  be 
doomed  to  disappointment  in  the  book  before  us,  however,  for  a  large  part  of 
it  would  be  absolutely  incomprehensible  to,a  young  man  who  had  not  had  at 
least  several  months  of  store  experience. 
A  Dictionary  of  Chemical  Solubilities,  Inorganic.  By  .\rthur  Me?- 
singer  Comey,  Ph.D.  Macmillan  &  Co.,  London  and  New  York.  1896.  Re- 
ceived from  John  Wanamaker,  Philadelphia.    Price,  $5.    Pp.  515. 
No  book  on  this  subject  has  appeared  since  the  publication  of  Storer's  Dic- 
tionary of  Solubilities  of  Chemical  Substances,  in  1864. 
Such  a  work  is  largely  a  labor  of  love,  and  Dr.  Comey  deserves  the  gratitude 
of  chemists  and  pharmacists  for  his  unselfish  devotion  to  the  subject.  He  has 
been  unable  to  verify  the  figures;  that  would  be  a  physical  impossibility;  so  he 
has,  as  far  as  possible,  quoted  all  the  reliable  authorities,  although  in  some  cases 
quite  contradictory  results  have  been  obtained  and  recorded  by  different  inves- 
tigators. 
For  the  data  previous  to  i860  considerable  use  has  been  made  of  the  above- 
mentioned  Storer's  Dictionary,  and,  to  obtain  those  since  that  time,  the  author 
has  consulted  a  large  number  of  authorities.  The  work  has  been  brought  up 
to  March,  1894.  The  appendix  contains  formulas  and  tables  for  the  conversion 
of  the  degrees  of  various  hydrometer  scales  into  specific  gravity,  and  a  synchro- 
nistic table  of  the  periodicals  to  which  references  are  most  frequently  made. 
Technology  Quarterly  and  Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Arts. 
Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology.    Boston,  December,  1895. 
This  valuable  publication  has,  in  the  last  four  numbers,  given  space  to  a 
"  Review  of  American  Chemical  Research,"  under  the  direction  of  Dr.  A.  A. 
Noyes,  of  the  Institute.  It  is  more  complete  than  anything  of  its  kind  that 
has  heretofore  appeared  on  this  subject,  and  cannot  but  be  of  value  to  every 
one  who  tries  to  keep  pace  with  the  progress  made  in  the  science  of  chemistry 
in  this  country. 
Vierteljahresschrift  uber  die  fortschr itte  auf  dem  Gebiete  der 
Chemie  der  Nahrungs-  und  Genussmittel.    1895.    Heft  4. 
