Handbuch der anorganischen Chemie

Abstract

THIS stately volume of more than 900 pages treats of the elements of the fourth group of the periodic system, namely, C, Si, Ti, Ge, Zr, Sn, Pb, and Th. It opens with an excellent comparative summary by Abegg and Brauner of the general chemical and electrochemical relationships of the members of the group. Then comes a truly magnificent monograph on carbon by Weigert, covering 276 pages, with a iliterature-index containing 1307 references. It would be quite impossible in a short notice such as the present to give any adequate idea of the masterly manner in which the author has dealt with his great subject, so that a few references must suffice. In dealing with the allotropic forms of carbon, the usual purely de scriptive account is followed by an extraordinarily in teresting discussion of the energy and stability-relationships, in which the researches of Schenck and Heller, and of Smits, are dealt with. The author also applies Nernst's theorem to the problem of the transition-point between diamond and graphite, but an arithmetical error appears to have crept into his calculation here.

Handbuch der anorganischen Chemie.

Herausgegeben von Dr. R. Abegg Dr. F. Auerbach. Dritter Band, Zweite Abteilung. Pp. xii + 921. (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1909.)