Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  \ 
November,  19 19.  > 
Book  Reviews. 
76i 
ferred  to,  it  was  shortly  followed  by  offers  from  the  Monsanto 
Chemical  Works  to  buy  the  entire  amount  at  a  price  of  several 
cents  above  the  then  prevailing  market,  or  to  act  as  the  govern- 
ment's agent,  thereby  permitting  the  government  to  receive  the 
benefit  of  any  advance  in  price. 
The  War  Department  officials  favored  the  latter  plan,  with  the 
result  that  the  Monsanto  Chemical  Works  have  received  a  contract 
making  them  sole  selling  agents  for  approximately  30,000,000  pounds 
of  phenol. 
BOOK  REVIEWS. 
The  Condensed  Chemical  Dictionary:  A  reference  volume  for 
all  requiring  quick  access  to  a  large  amount  of  essential  data 
regarding  chemicals  and  other  substances  used  in  manufacturing 
and  laboratory  work.  Compiled  and  edited  by  the  Editorial 
Staff  of  the  Chemical  Engineering  catalog.  Published  by  the 
Chemical  Catalog  Company,  1  Madison  Avenue,  New  York. 
Price,  cloth  $5.00;  leather-bound  and  thumb-indexed,  $6.00. 
The  review  of  a  reference  book  is  a  difficult  undertaking,  For 
proper  appraisement  of  the  value  of  a  book  of  this  class  it  must  be 
used  in  actual  practice  over  a  long  period  of  time. 
The  book,  which  was  recently  issued  under  the  title  given  above. 
essays  to  be  more  than  its  name  indicates,  for  it  contains  so  many 
drug  titles  as  well,  that  it  might  easily  be  termed ."  A  Dictionary  of 
Substances  used  in  Medicine,  Pharmacy  and  in  the  Sciences  and 
Arts" 
To  give  one  who  has  not  seen  this  book  an  idea  of  its  compre- 
hensiveness and  accuracy  can  be  done  only  by  selecting  some  one 
subdivision  or  group  of  substances  and  comparing  them  with  a  cor- 
responding list  in  some  other  authoritative  work.  In  this  case  the 
acids  were  chosen  as  the  group  and  the  U.  S.  P.  as  the  authority. 
On  page  504  of  the  U.  S.  P.  in  the  table  of  molecular  weights 
there  begins  a  list  of  about  fifty  titles  of  acids,  not  all  of  which, 
however,  are  official,  either  in  the  text  or  as  reagents.  The  Con- 
densed Chemical  Dictionary  lists  the  titles  and  descriptions  of  nearly 
200  different  acids  of  greater  or  less  commercial  importance  and  in 
addition  contains  more  than  200  cross  references. 
