Metallography

Abstract

DR. DESCH has evidently been at great pains to compile a work that shall give a fair idea of the subject as a whole as it appeals to him, and he is, above all, a theorist. It is a difficult work for the writer to review, for two reasons: because it covers practically the whole range of this enormous subject and is therefore necessarily dogmatic on many matters that, if disagreeing with the author, it would need much space to discuss adequately; and, secondly, because he dismisses the whole Sheffield School thus:—“This (the Osmond) hypothesis has been generally accepted as the best expression of the known facts, in spite of strong opposition from a (the Sheffield) school of metallurgists …” although on pp. 363 and 364 we find rather contradictory opinions, such as “β-iron was originally described by Osmond as a hard variety of iron. It is more correct to say that it is capable of forming solid solutions with carbon, which become hard under certain conditions of cooling.”

Metallography.

By Dr. Cecil H. Desch. Pp. x + 429. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1910.) Price 9s.