(1) A First Book of Chemistry (2) An Introduction to the Study of Organic Chemistry (3) Methods of Quantitative Organic Analysis (4) Elementary Household Chemistry, an Introductory Text-book for Students of Home Economics

Abstract

(1) WE fancy that reviewers of a new book would generally appeal first to the preface to learn the object of its author in committing his ideas to print, then try to discover, especially in an elementary text-book, any originality in the method of treatment or arrangement, and finally read the descriptive part. Taking these points in reference to this little “first book of chemistry,” it is interesting and satisfactory to learn that it follows no particular syllabus and so gives the author entire freedom in his method of treatment. Books on elementary chemistry are so numerous that there seems to be little room for novelty eithex in arrangement, description, or experimental illustration, and we have failed to discover anything intrinsically new; but such experiments as have been selected are simple and suggestive in character, and the illustrations which accompany them are unusually good. The treatment is essentially qualitative and non-theoretical. There is no attempt to impose on a student any immature notion of what chemical changes denote. He studies them in great variety and observes their results. He is troubled with no atomic theory, no symbols, and no equations. He learns a lot of hard experimental facts in the first fifteen chapters, and in the sixteenth and last he obtains a little glimpse into the quantitative relations of the reactions he has examined. (1) A First Book of Chemistry. By W. A. Whitton. Pp. vi + 150. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd.; New York: The Macmillan Co., 1914.) Price 1s. 6d. (2) An Introduction to the Study of Organic Chemistry. By Dr. H. T. Clarke. Pp. viii + 484. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1914.) Price 6s. 6d. (3) Methods of Quantitative Organic Analysis. By P. C. R. Kingscott R. S. G. Knight. Pp. xvi + 283. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1914.) Price 6s. 6d. net. (4) Elementary Household Chemistry, an Introductory Text-book for Students of Home Economics. By Prof. J. F. Snell. Pp. viii + 307. (New York: The Macmillan Co.; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1914.) Price 5s. 6d. net.