BOOK REVIEWS

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BOOK REVIEWS T H E FREEZING, STORAGE AND TRASSPORT OF S E W ZEALASD LAMB. B y Ezer Grijiths, J . R. Vickery, and N. E. Holmes. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Food Investigation Special Report S o . 41. His Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1932. Price, 7 s. 6 d T H i s report presents in detail the results of a scientific study of the present methods employed in the cooling, freezing, storage, and transportation to England of Sew Zealand lamb and mutton. Eighteen freezing works were visited and the conditions in six of them analyzed. I n addition, fifty-eight special lots of lambs, comprising eight hundred rand nine carcasses, were followed all the way through the processes. The transport of the carcasses from the cold stores to the ship, the overseas transport, the transort from docks to London cold stores, and the cold stores in fiondon were also thoroughly investigated. A great mass of data was recorded and analyzed. The purpose of the investigations was to ascertain how far the conditions of freezing, storage, and transportation of Sew Zealand mutton and lamb could be modified so as to improve its “bloom” and general quality. Bloom is defined as the appearance of freshly killed meat. It was found that the average loss of weight from prime carcame9 during cooling, freezing, storage for 28 days in Sew Zealand, ocean transport, and storage for 28 days in Great Britain was 3.65 per cent. For lambs of second uality the loss was slightly greater. The average loss of w e i g t for the trade as a whole is 3.95 per cent. This loss in weight is caused by evaporation of water from the superficial tissues of the carcasses, and thus these tissues become desiccated and lose their bloom. The longer carcasses are stored, the greater the loss of weight, and therefore of bloom. The stockinets now used in covering lamb carcasses were found to be inadequate to protect the carcasses from serious desiccation and loss of bloom. The authors recommend wrapping carcasses in an odorless material of low permeability to aqueous vapor-. g., several layers of waxed paper. Experiments carried out during the survey proved that such wrappings preserved the bloom. This report is a valuable contribution to the literature on the freezing of meat and the transportation of the frozen product. The conclusions reached by the authors are logical and would have been predicted by a theoretical consideration of the problem. DONALD K. TRESSLER

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS BY X-RAYS AND ITS APPLICATIONS. By Georg uon Heuesy. The G. F. Baker Nonresident Lectureship in Chemistry a t Cornell University. 333 pages. McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 370 Seventh Ave., New York, 1932. Price, $3.00.

IN GENERAL, published lectures are intended for the musty oblivion of library shelves. Von Hevesy has done well under this burden in giving a running account of his major scientific contributions. Quantitative chemical analysis by x-ray spectroscopic met)hods serves as a background for some geochemical discussions and as an incidental theme in an account of the discovery and properties of hafnium. The author speaks: “The great advantages of the x-ray method hecome especially conspicuous in the field of exact quantitative analyses where this method is, in most cases, of much greater use than the optical one.” Two methods of x-ray analysis have been developed-one using flu?rescent radiation, the other direct. Tn both instances determinations are made by comparison with an emission line of an element added in known concentration. If quantitative results are to be obtained, the selection of the reference line, conditions of excitation, and possible absorption effects must be carefully considered. The limiting detectable concentration of an element in mineral substances is about 0.01 per cent; the accuracy when moderate concentrations are considered can approach some parts per thousand, but is usually about 1 per cent. The art of carrying out analyses and the apparatus used are described in some detail after B cursory introduction to x-ray spectroscopy. The finding of hafnium is.rooted in the genius of Bohr. Von Hevesy gives an account of its discovery, by himself and Coster, followed by a summary of subsequent work on the isolation and

the roperties of its compounds. The most conspicuous property of t i e hafnium is its great chemical similarity to zirconium. This similarity, rather than rare occurrence, preserved the discovery of the element for a late day. The last 60 pages (the third part) of the book treat of the chemical composition of the earth and of the rosmos. Clark’s and Washington’s data on terrestrial rocks, Merrill’s and Farrington’s on meteorites, and Russell’s on the constitution of the solar atmosphere are discussed. The x-ray spectroscopic method was used in the determination of some minor constituents of meteorites and standard mixtures of central European intrusive rocks. A summary is given of the abundance of the elements in igneous rocks, and in meteoric stones and irons. STERLINQ B. HENDRICKS T H E SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY. By Leo Gurwitsch and Harold Moore. 2nd edition. 572 pages. D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 250 xii Fourth Ave., New York, 1932. Price, $8.00,

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THEnew En lish edition of the well-known work by the late Leo Gurwitsct, translated and revised by Moore, includes a considerable amount of new information which brings the book well up to date. This information is selected to make the book more specifically adapted to the needs of the American petroleum technologists, which is very valuable, as the original work was based rimarily on the experiences with Russian crudes. Wittfew exceptions, the text included in the first English translation is left intact, and additions are inserted in appropriate laces without disturbing the integrity of the original work. Keveral new sections dealing with the power factor of insulating oils, tube still distillation, and h drogenation of petroleum are introduced, adding to the value o?the book, although the section on hydrogenation might have been presented in a more critical form. It is to be regretted that the few omissions or misleading notations ersist through the Russian, German, and English editions. &hus on page 223 the units chosen for expressing the electric conductivity of oils, as well as the temperature a t which the measurements were made, are not given. The method of writing numerals in the form 2.5.10-16 is also misleading, as the same notation is used for separating the decimals and for indicating the multiplication sign. The total number of such omissions or of misprints is too small, however, to be of real inconvenience to the reader. A slightly more elaborate subject index appears desirable. As in former editions, the tremendous amount of information on chemistry, physics, and refining of petroleum collected on comparatively few pages is astonishing; the logical order in their presentations, clearness of discussions, and proper selection of references makes the book invaluable both to beginners and t o those with long experience in the petroleum industry. V. KALICHEVSKY ESZTCLOPADIE DER TECHSISCHES CHEMIE. B.ASD IX. S-ALPETER BIS TISOSFARBSTOFFE. By Fritz Ullmann. 2nd revised edition. 835 pages. Vrban and Schwarzenberg, Berlin and Vienna, 1932. Price, paper, 45 marks; bound, 54 marks.

P R E ~ I O volumes CS of this series (of which there are to be 10 volumes) have already been reviewed [IsD. EX. CHEM.,21, 393, 889 (1929); 22, 200, 1024 (1930);. 23, 248, 973 (1931); 24, 476 (1932)j. The present book IS quite up to the standard

of the previous volumes. Previous reviews have emphnsizcd the importance of this exhaustive work, with its wealth of literature and patent citations. Among topics covered in this volume we: nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, oxygen. lubricants, sulfur, sulfur dioxide, sulfuric acid, sulfur dyes, silk, soaps, selenium, silver, silicon, starch, dust explosions, stearic :wid, sterols, nitrogen, straw and straw pulp, strontium, sublimation, sulfonation, tobacco, tannins, tantalum, tellurium, temperature measurement, textile oils and soaps, thallium, and thorium. An index to the volume is included as a separate, which, with the indices to Volumes I-VI1 and VIII, furnishes a complete guide to all of the encyclqpedia published so far Volume X C. J WEST will contain a complete subject index.

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