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In the period 1895-1900, which has elapsed since the original
publication of our work on 'Cellulose,' there have appeared a large
number of publications dealing with special points in the chemistry of
cellulose. So large has been the contribution of matter that it has been
considered opportune to pass it under review; and the present volume,
taking the form of a supplement to the original work, is designed to
incorporate this new matter and bring the subject as a whole to the
level to which it is thereby to be raised. Some of our critics in
reviewing the original work have pronounced it 'inchoate.' For this
there are some explanations inherent in the matter itself. It must be
remembered that every special province of the science has its systematic
beginning, and in that stage of evolution makes a temporary 'law unto
itself.' In the absence of a dominating theory or generalisation which,
when adopted, gives it an organic connection with the general advance of
the science, there is no other course than to classify the
subject-matter. Thus 'the carbohydrates' may be said to have been in the
inchoate condition, qualified by a certain classification, prior to the
pioneering investigations of Fischer. In attacking the already
accumulated and so far classified material from the point of view of a
dominating theory, he found not only that the material fell into
systematic order and grew rapidly under the stimulus of fruitful
investigation, but in turn contributed to the firmer establishment of
the theoretical views to which the subject owed its systematic new
birth. On the other hand, every chemist knows that it is only the
simpler of the carbohydrates which are so individualised as to be
connoted by a particular formula in the stereoisomeric system. Leaving
the monoses, there is even a doubt as to the constitution of cane sugar;
and the elements of uncertainty thicken as we approach the question of
the chemical structure of starch. This unique product of plant life has
a literature of its own, and how little of this is fully known to what
we may term the 'average chemist' is seen by the methods he will employ
for its quantitative estimation. In one particular review of our work
where we are taken to task for producing 'an aggravating book, inchoate
in the highest degree ... disfigured by an obscurity of diction which
must materially diminish its usefulness' ['Nature,' 1897, p. 241], the
author, who is a well-known and com