.
Recent Books - - - -
Recent Advances in Organic Chemistry. D.Sc., Professor ALFRED W. STEWART, of Chemistry in the Queen's University of Belfast. 5th ed. Longmans, Green & Co., London and New York, 1927. 2 vols., xiv 387 and xiv 382 pp. 14 X 21.5 cm. $7.50 each.
+
+
This book, which has given aid and inspiration t o many for nearly two decades, has been rewritten and enlarged and now appears in two volumes. The object is to give vivid pictures of recent developments in selected fields rather than to cover the whole of organic chemistry. Each chapter is complete in itself. Volume 1 contains chapters an: Main currents in organic chemistry, modern reagents, addition reactions, aliphatic diazenes, ketenes, polyketides, monacyclic, dicyclic, and olehic terpenes, pyridine alkaloids, quinoline alkaloids, purines, polypeptides, trivalent carbon, unsaturation, and orientation in the benzene system. Volume 2 is more than half new and contains chapters on: Organic chemistry in the 20th century, some carbohydrate constitutions, sesquiterpenes, rubber, recent work on alkaloids, anthocyanins, chlorophyll, depsides, theories of the natural syntheses of vital products, new organo-alkali compounds, abnormal valency, structural formulas and their failings, some applications of electronics to organic chemistry, and some unsolved problems. The topics are well selected and discriminatingly treated. This hook will prove valuahle t o ambitiausstudentswho wish to go beyond the textbooks and will greatly aid teachers in the impossible task of keeping up with organic chemistry. I t is well worth while. E. EMMBT REID
A System of Qualitative Analysis for the
Rare Elements. ARTHURA. NOYES, Professor of Chemistry, California Institute of Technology, and WILLIAM C. BRAY, Professor of Chemistry, University of California. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1927. xii 536 pp. 14 X 21.5 an. $5.00.
+
The aim of this book, as stated in the preface, is three-fold: fyst, to supply the chemical analyst with a system of procedure which will enable him to detect the various elements in all their comhinations by as simple a process as possible; second, t o record the numerous experimental investigations that have been carried out in developing this System of Analysis; and, third, t o provide for students a course in advanced inorganic chemistry that will afford them an acquaintance with the chemical properties of the rarer elements, many of which have now become highly important. The first two of these aims are evident in that there are really two volumes bound in one: the first extending t o page 267, giving the system of analysis with procedures and notes; the second, the balance of the text, giving the confirmatory experiments on which the system is based. The third aim receives attention through suggestions under the heading, "The Course of Study," in the first few pages of the hook. Fortunate the school that can find time in its schedule for such a course and students free t o elect i t from the multitude of courses now appearing in the average chemical curriculum! This is a book that has been eagerly awaited by the analytical chemist and that now supplies him with an immense fund of practical information. The attempt t o fit all the metals into a single systematic procedure far qualitative testing represents a culmination of the older point of view in analytical chemistry
