Elements of Quantitative Analysis

Abstract

AFTER the consideration of some preliminary matters, the author, within the compass of less than two hundred small pages, treats of almost every branch of quantitative chemical analysis, including minerals of many sorts, water, fuel, the products of alkali factories, manures, organic substances, soap, oils and fats, and gases. It follows that the space devoted to each section is very small, and in many cases it would be more correct to say that the methods are indicated rather than described. This economy of words and space sometimes leads to instructions that might cause accidents, as in the description of Kjeldahl's method of estimating nitrogen, where the tudent is instructed to boil the substance with fuming sulphuric acid, &c., then to “allow to cool and add a tolerable excess, about o grams will suffice, of caustic soda.... Distill off the ammonia,” &c. In other cases the desire to be brief leaves the student without instructions, as in the analysis of water, in which he is told to determine the free and albumenoid ammonia, and referred for the method to a simple description of the estimation of ammonia by Nessler's solution. On the other hand, it is a pleasure to notice that some methods are given that are not generally known, such as the colorimetric estimation of titanium by means of hydrogen peroxide.

Elements of Quantitative Analysis.

By Dr. G. H. Bailey. Pp. x + 246. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1905.) Price 4s. 6d.