The description of a laboratory is followed by two long and well-written sections on the arts of weighing and measuring, in which the account of the methods of determining specific gravities, and of the general management of a delicate balance, are well deserving the student’s attentive perusal: indeed, there are no operations which are more frequently performed in a slovenly and careless manner, than those in which scales and weights are concerned; and we should advise the tyro to sit down with his balance and this book before him, and practise the manipulations which it explains. The fourth section, on the sources and management of heat, is devoted to the construction and management of different kinds of furnaces, lamps, blowpipes, thermometers, and pyrometers, and abounds in useful hints, and in the details of [p278] practical information; and the same remark applies to the succeeding sections on comminution and solution—indeed, we were surprised at finding so much to be taught in regard to these very simple operations. The seventh, eighth, and ninth sections treat of distillation and sublimation, precipitation, and filtration. Here, and indeed throughout the work, the wood-cuts are particularly distinct and well executed. In the section on crystallization, the uses of that process are enumerated; and to this succeeds an account of evaporation. All these operations are extremely well investigated and described, both as to their principles and as to the most proper means of effecting them; a number of curious circumstances are pointed out, by which their results are influenced, and by which certainty and success may be insured. The uses of coloured tests are explained and illustrated in the twelfth section. Of coloured liquids the author chiefly recommends the infusion of red cabbage; and as it is not only a very good test for private experiments but of excellent service to the public lecturer in rendering certain changes of composition visible to an audience, it may be worth while extracting the directions for preparing it.