Abstract
MR. J. Y. BUCHANAN publishes in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (vol. xlix., part i., 1912) the results of extended researches on the specific gravity and the displacement of some saline solutions. The memoir, which occupies 225 quarto pages, deals with the densities and variations in densities of certain groups of saline solutions; but although the results obtained are themselves of interest and value, the importance of the work centres rather in the detailed study of the use of the hydrometer as an instrument for work requiring a high degree of accuracy. This importance, of course, arises mainly from the fact that ever since the days of the Challenger expedition, Mr. Buchanan has been the principal champion of the hydrometer method for determining the specific gravities of samples of sea-water for purposes of oceanography, and that the method has now for many years been practically disused by most oceanographers.
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The Hydrometer as an Instrument of Precision 1 . Nature 91, 229–230 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/091229b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/091229b0