Watts' Dictionary of Chemistry

Abstract

THE completion of the grand work before us renders it possible to form a fair estimate of its features and its general character. No candid reader can fail to appreciate the industry displayed by the editors and contributors, in bringing together and sifting out the vast mass of existing matter, in a science which is experiencing so rapid a growth. Perhaps a greater difficulty has been encountered in compressing within reasonable limits the facts which must claim insertion. This end has been reached by a style laudably laconic, but at the same time free from obscurity, and by an ingenious system of abbreviations, the editors—or we might better say the authors, since the entire work has been re-written—have confined themselves to the pure science, leaving its thousand and one applications in manufactures, metallurgy, and agriculture, to be dealt with in the “Dictionary of Applied Chemistry,” issued by the same publishers. Without this limitation, the cost of producing the work would have been simply prohibitive.

Watts' Dictionary of Chemistry.

Revised and entirely re-written. By M. M. Pattison Muir, and H. Forster Morley. Assisted by eminent contributors. Vol. IV. With Addenda. 8vo. Pp. 922. (London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1894.)