ogy of water, and refers inquirers to half a page of authorities. Among the organic substances treated in this volume are the oils, paraffin, petroleum, starch, and sugar. The Vegeto-alkaloids, grouped under this head, are also found here. The Triphenylmethane Coloring Matters are another important group of organic substances treated in the present volume, the author of the article being Prof. Otto N. Witt, of Berlin. Alfred H. Allen, author of the Commercial Organic Analysis, contributes the article on Fixed Oils and Fats; Prof. W. A. Tilden, those on the Essential Oils, Terpenes, and Resin; the one on Sugar is by Messrs. J. A. R. and B. E. R. Newlands; that on Russian Petroleum is by Boverton Redwood; and that on American Petroleum by Prof. S. P. Sadtler, of the University of Pennsylvania. Among the more purely scientific articles are those on Specific Gravity, Solution, and Spectrum Analysis; while others whose technological character are more marked are Paper, Pottery and Porcelain (by William Burton, Esq., of the Wedgwood Works), Photography, Soap, Tea, and Wine. The contributions of the editor (unsigned articles) are many and important. When so much chemical knowledge is spread before us, perhaps we ought not to expect Prof. Thorpe to know what Americans mean by saleratus, or even the current spelling of the word (p. 364); and it is still less material that he allows his contributor, John Heron, Esq., to annex Long Island to New Jersey (p. 579).
A Guide to Stereochemistry. With an Appendix: Models for Use in teaching Organic Chemistry. By Arnold Eiloart, Ph. D., B. Sc. New York: Alexander Wilson, 26 Delancey Street, Agent. Price, $1 net; postage free.
The scope and purpose of this book may be best indicated by the following quotation from the author's preface:
"Although no new branch of chemistry is found more interesting by chemists and students than that which treats of the arrangement of atoms in space, so that lectures on the subject are everywhere welcome, yet it has been difficult to give guidance and permanence to this interest. . . . It seemed desirable in attempting to supply such a book to make it as compact as possible without stripping the subject of the charm so natural to it. In this Guide, therefore, established facts have been promptly accepted as such. . . . Living issues appropriate the pages thus gained, so that more than the usual proportion of space is occupied by the later and more daring developments of stereochemistry; the theories concerning the space-relations of nitrogen are a case in point. At the same time especial care has been taken to notice the criticisms of those hostile to such innovations."
It should be added that this work, while it may be used as a text-book by students, will also be read as a critical and historical review of the subject.
The American Book Company adds Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice to its series of English Classics for Schools. An account of the sources whence the play was derived, a notice of the occasion on which it was written, suggesting that it was designed to take advantage of current sensational events, and an analysis, are given in the introduction.
The Letters from Queensland (Australia), reprinted from the special correspondence of the London Times by Macmillan & Co., contains, besides sketches of travel and scenery and incidental observations of Chinese and Kanaka labor, valuable information and statistics about the sugar industry and mineral wealth of the colony, cattle and sheep raising, and a political chapter on the Separation Question, or the question of the division of the colony by the separation of North Queensland.
Moses or Darwin? A School Problem for all Friends of Truth and Progress, is the title of three papers on Evolution and Darwinianism which were originally delivered as lectures by the author, Dr. Arnold Dodel, at Zurich and St. Gall, Switzerland. Their immediate purpose was to direct the attention of the public "to the calamitous gulf lying between the higher and the common schools"—which he further describes by the words "Truth for the few" (higher school pupils, to whom the scientific doctrines of evolution are taught) and "Errors for the many" (lower school pupils, who are taught "the Mosaic myth"). The translator and American editor, Frederick W. Dodel, furnishes a preface, in which is a disquisition on School
