Elementary Chemical Microscopy

Abstract

THE first edition of this work was reviewed at some length in NATURE in 1915 (vol. 96, p. 84) shortly after its appearance. The subject of chemical microscopy, however, received a great impetus during the war, many new applications revealing themselves in the special war industries, which resulted in a more extensive use of the microscope in applied chemistry than at any time during the last quarter of a century. Hence, a new edition of this book was found necessary in America, and it is somewhat disappointing to find that practically no new methods or processes, and but little new apparatus, are described. The lack of photomicrographs of typical microscope fields of characteristic crystals produced in the tests described is still very obvious, but the author on the one hand promises a second book to make good this deficiency, and on the other states that this present book is primarily intended as a text-book (especially for the students of Cornell University), and not as a book of reference, and that the method of instruction in the Cornell course is intentionally one which leads to the best results when the student is encouraged to discover for himself (under guidance) the characteristic morphology of the materials studied.

Elementary Chemical Microscopy.

By Prof. E. M. Chamot. Second edition, partly rewritten and enlarged. Pp. xvi + 479. (New York: J. Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1921.) 25s. net.