THE BRITISH SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS THE FALL PROGRAM for the British Society began on October 13th. A lecture entitled, "A Spectrophotometric Quality and Stability Criteria for Medicinal Liquid Paraffin," was presented by R. Schnurmann. On November 10th, R. Barer spoke on "Spectroscopy and Microscopy." The last scientific meeting for 1955 was held on December 8th. An address on "Some Aspects of Perfumery Chemicals" was given by A. J. Krajkeman. All scientific meetings take place at 7:30 p.m. at The Royal Society of Arts, John Adam Street, London, W.C. 2. Under joint arrangements with the Society of Cosmetic Chemists of Great Britain, a three-year, part-time course on the chemistry and tech- nology of cosmetics is being held at Acton Technical College. The course is intended for research assistants, laboratory technicians and assistant chemists in the cosmetic industry. The course will lead to an award of the Diploma of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists, holders of which may later qualify for the Associateship in the Society. 418

BOOK REVIEWS INVESTIGATION OF RATES AND MECHANISMS OF REACTION, edited by S. L. Friess and A. Weissberger. Interscience Publishers, Inc., New York 1, N.Y. 1953. 760 pages, size 6 X 9 inches, illustrated and indexed. Price $12.50. This is Volume VIII of a series entitled Technique of Organic Chem- istry, to which fifteen contributors add their knowledge and skill for a total of ten chapters. A six-page symbol index at the opening of the book is a thoughtful and useful addition. Four chapters go into detail on various organic reaction rate data, including the use of tagged isotopes and interpretation of findings. A forty-two page chapter reviews biological reactions •n its many intricacies. This volume and its predecessors are not for the neophyte chemist. They are excellent references.-- M. G. DENAVARRE. A FUENCH-ENoLISH DICTIONARY FOR CHEMISTS, by Austin M. Pat- terson. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York 16, N.Y. 1954. 476 pages, size 51/4 X 7l/4 inches. Price $6.50. This is the second edition of a popular chemist's "right-hand" dic- tionary. Words are labeled as to their field of application as Bact., Pharm., etc. Four pages of intro- duction help the user in getting the most out of the dictionary. The test of any dictionary is the presence of a representative group of words used in an industry or profes- sion if it is a specialized tome. As far as this industry is concerned words such as immortelle, moussant, cellulite, broyage, abeille, poil, moyeu, ongle, and faro are all present. In fact this reviewer's knowledge of French requires the use of a dictionary and therefore he finds this book valuable. The book is of a size that is easily handled. The binding is chosen for plenty of wear. You will find it a useful tool in your work.--M. G. DE•[AVAR RE. STATISTICAL METHODS FOR CHEMI- CAL EXPERIMENTATION, by W. L. Gore. Interscience Publishers, Inc., New York 1, N.Y. 1952. 210 pages, 5 X 7 inches, indexed. Price $3.30. This book is divided into seven chapters: Introduction, Statistical Concepts, The Reliability of Esti- mates, Analysis of Variance, Design of Experiments, Correlation and Re- gression, Attribute Statistics. Except in the chapter on the de- sign of experiments, the author is mainly interested in defining various statistics and statistical methods and, in the case of the methods, giving examples of their uses. "No at.te.mpt has been made to show the ong•n or mathematical relationships of the formulae used," as the author says in the preface. In the chapter on design of experiments the author points out the basic attributes of good experiments and describes some of the statistical pitfalls into which 419