6 THE ,4NALYST. R E V I E W S . PLANT ANALYSIS : QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE. By G. Dragedorf, P l d . Tran- slated from the German by H. G. Greenish, F.T.C. London : BailliAre, Tindall, and Cox. AT the present time, when plant products have become of such vast importance, not only to pharmacy, but also to many of our large manufacturing industries, this work will be received as a valuable addition to chemical literature, especially by those who are called upon to make estimations of the active inyredz'ents of vegetable preparations, or the general examination of raw products. There is, probably, no branch of chemical literature that has received less attention than the general analysis of plants for their proximate principles, for what has been written on the subject is distributed over such a large area that few would undertake, or be capable of, collecting and revising the work in a satisfactory manner.Another great difficulty of the subject is, that hardly any new plant can be examined that mill not require a special method of procedure or a modification of the processes at present in use j and fresh products turn up which are frequently only separated and purified after the greatest labour ; and then the tests for many well known principles are most unsatis- factory, and difficult of application. The author has, however, simplified matters as far as possible, giving the most important methods of separating, estimating, and testing a very large number of vege table products. Due reference is given to papers from which methods of estimation, &c., have been taken, and when these have been translated or abstracted into English journals they are fully noted, in many instances a very useful referencc.We regret, howevei; to uote how few English chemists are quoted, yet much good work has been done in this branch of chemistry in Great Britain. The first part of the work is devoted to the separation of the constituents into groups; a weighed quantity of the substance is extracted- 1st. With petroleum spirit not boiling above 45O : which extracts fixed oils, volatile fat acids, vegetable wax, together with a small quantity of chlorophyll, and some alkaloids. 2nd. With ether free from alcohol and water : which dissolves resins, some acids, and chlorophyll. 3rd. With absolute alcohol : which dissolves tannin, glucosides, bitter principles and alkaloids.4th. With water : which dissolves mucilagenous substances, dextrin organic acids, glucoses, sacharoses, &c., albuminoids, ammonium salts, nitric acid and amido-compounds. 5th. With dilute caustic soda, '1 to 02 per cent. : which dissolves metarabic acid, albumen, phlobaphene, &c. 6th. With dilute hydrochloric acid, 1 per cent. : which dissolves calcium, oxalate, pararabin, &c., or if starch is present the aubatauce is boiled for four hours with the acid and the glucose estimated,THE ANALYST. 7 7th. The residue, which consists of cellulose, lignin and allied substances. These various groups are then submitted to a searching examination. The second part is a sort of supplement to the first and gives full instructions when possibmle €or the quantitative estimation, and qualitative examination, reactions, &c,, of the con- stituents. The work .iiniBhes with two very useful tables ; the first giving the per- centage composition of the constituents of plants, arranged alphabetically ; the second the comporsition of the more important constituents amanged according to the percentage of carbon. We can coddently recommend this work to all who are interested in chemicaml agriculture, or plant analysis, as one from which can be gathered an immense amount oi useful information not to be found in any other published English work.