REVIEW 519 REVIEW. THE BRITISH COAL-TAR INDUSTRY. ITS ORIGIN, DEVELOPMENT, AND DECLINE. Williams and Norgate, London. BY assembling in one volume the more important lectures and addresses delivered in this country on the title-subject, Professor Gardner has rendered a public service which is both timely and notable. Even to chemists, who are generally familiar with the English history of the coal-tar colour industry and its mournful progress of the last forty years, the volume offers unique opportunities of study, presenting, as it does, the valued opinions of our leaders in chemical thought.freed from the burdensome search through decennial indexes which would otherwise be necessary. More important still, however, is the fund of information now accessible to the general public, and which, being largely in the form of discourses, not always addressed to purely chemical bodies, should be attractive to the layman and easily assimilated by him.In fact, the Advisory Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, appointed last July by the Board of Education to administer &25,000 for the assistance of scientific research, might consider the allocation of 6350 to furnishing every Metr;ber of Parliament with a copy, particularly as this sum would be considerably diminished if the presentation were made conditional upon an undertaking to read the book.Not only is Professor Gardner’s idea, a fruitful one, but great wisdom and an admirable sense of proportion have been brought to its execution. There are four contributions from the lamented founder of the industry, beginning with the Cantor Lectures of 1868, which open the book, and concluding with his Hofmann Memorial Lecture; there are five from Professor Meldola, four from Sir Henry Roscoe, and one each from the late Mr.Friswell, Professor A. G. Green, Sir James Dewar, Mr, A. G. Bloxam, who dealt in an illuminating manner with Patent Law in relation to the Dyeing Industry, and Mr.I. Singer, who read the colour barometer in a, breezy and original manner before the Society of Dyers and Colourists in 1910. All these lectures, together with many others to which reference is given, are collected from journals issued prior to 1911, and there follow war addresses from Dr. F. M. Perkin, Sir William Tilden, Dr. Ormandy, Lord Moul ton, Professor Gardner, whose Edited by Professor WALTER M.GARDNER. 1915. Pp. 436. Price 10s. 6d. net.520 REVIEW lucid and broad-minded contribution is modestly abridged, Professor Frankland, Mr. J. W. Gordon discussing Patent Law reform, Professor Meldola, and Professor W. H. Perkin. Were it not that the moral is one of such sinister import, I should be tempted to call the volume a symposium of the British Coal-Tar Industry, and that is perhaps what the Germans, with that sense of humour happily peculiar to themselves, would label it.As this book is one which should be destined to appear in further editions, I would suggest to the editor that these include the speech of Dr. Carl Duisberg at the Perkin, Jubilee Banquet. This brief chapter on 66 Ourselves as Others See Us, by One of the Others,” would give just that touch of suuce tartare for which some digestions crave.Although it is not possible for cold print to depict the penetrating exuberance of the orator, the diagnosis which he made on that occasion is well worthy of wider notice, from more than one point of view. Equally illuminating, although for entirely different reasons, would be a judicious selection of wisdom quoted from the official report of the Aniline Dye Debate, which took place in the House of Commons on February 22, 1915; this, however, would involve much labour, which in these busy days it would be scarcely fair to call upon the editor to undertake. M. 0. FORSTER.