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its application and connection with agriculture, biology, medicine, geology, etc. ;i t includes also biography. The biographies number altogether some 722 (living chemists have not been included); in many cases these are very brief, e.g., only 4 lines are devoted to Volta and rather more to Faraday, although fairly full references are appended to each from which fuller information may be sought. Further, in the case of the former, more information is found in the text under such headings as galvanic pile, electrochemistry, methane, and eudiometry, the cross references to which are not quoted in the biography. Among the biographies one notices names like Marsh, Kipp, and Selmi, but the absence of others, e.@;.,Hooke, Mayow, Watson, Hales, Rayleigh, and LeChatelier. A special feature has been made of phaae rule diagrams, especially in the case of metals; this is to be expected as the authors had previously published a book on chemical combination among metals, which was translated into English by Robinson in 1918. Branches of chemistry especially important to Italy are detailed with much valuable information, e.g., vegetable and essential oils, mercury and its medicinal preparations, marbles etc. The high standard of production of the previous volume has been fully maintained in the present one, and the whole constitutes a mine of interesting and accurate information. W. H. PATTERSON. Arsenical and Argentiferous Copper. By J. L. GREGIG, with a foreword by H. Foster Bain. American Chemical Society Monograph. 189 pp. New York: The Chemical Catalog Co., Inc., 1934. Price: $4.00. This monograph was prepared a t the Battelle Memorial Institute under the sponsorship of the Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Co. The author has made a thorough survey of the existing literature on the properties of arsenic- and silver-bearing copper and copper alloys, and in this monograph gives a detailed and critical discussion of the literature. He has not been satisfied with simply quoting the literature; he discusses i t a t length and attempts to explain the discrepancies and to bring out the correct facts and figures. I n this he was considerably aided by use of hitherto unpublished data of research work done a t Battelle and a t the laboratories of the Calumet and Hecla company. Not only has the author made a n admirable review and summary of the literature, but he has added to i t valuable new material. It is unfortunate that some of the curves have been reduced too much in printing, making i t rather difficult to read them correctly. The reviewer is in agreement with the foreword that “The monograph constitutes one of the most authentic and complete, as it is certainly themost up-to-date, of compendiums on the properties and uses of the metals. Nowhere else will so much modern knowledge of this ancient metal be found in so few pages.” S. SKROWRONSKI.
DEFAY. xi f 372 Etude thermodynamique de la tension super$cielle. By RAYMOND pp. Paris: Gauthier-Villars & Cie., 1934. This book offers a detailed study of the thermodynamic treatment of capillary phenomena and of adsorption, applied not only to systems in equilibrium but also t o irreversible transformations. Reaction velocity, catalysis, and velocity of adsorption are included in the topics treated by the author. The thermodynalnic methods of Th. de Donder furnish a basis for much of the discussion. This book can be commended to the attention of all serious students of the matters treated by the author. F. H. RIACDOUCALL.
