A Treatise on Chemistry

Abstract

IT is forty-three years since the first edition of Roscoe and Schorlemmer's “Treatise on Chemistry” appeared. The volumes on Organic Chemistry have now passed out of general use, but those on Inorganic Chemistry show no sign of any decline in popularity, and maintain their position almost unchallenged as the standard work on chemistry in the English language. It is not easy at the first attempt to discover what are the special qualities that give to Roscoe's book this attribute of perpetual youth and long-sustained utility, but the refusal of the author to sacrifice either clearness of exposition or scholarly writing in order to reduce the size of the treatise, or to overcrowd its pages with detail, has perhaps been one of the most important factors in securing these enviable attributes. Thus it is still possible to turn to the work for the detailed story of the investigation of the fixed or variable oxygen-content of the atmosphere, or of the composition of the distillate from hydrochloric acid, without finding that the narrative has been so abbreviated as to be valueless except as a guide to the original papers. The editors of successive editions must have exercised considerable restraint in order to allow a full account to be preserved of experiments which were becoming too old to be modern, but were still too modern to be classical.

A Treatise on Chemistry.

By the Rt. Hon. Sir H. E. Roscoe C. Schorlemmer. Vol. i., The Non-metallic Elements. Fifth edition, completely revised by Dr. J. C. Cain. Pp. xv + 968. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1920.) Price 30s. net.