This volume follows a companion*that was devoted to techniques used in the isolation and study of polysaccharides. The major part of the present book provides a description of the occurrence and nature of polysaccharides, arranged in five main chapters. The first such chapter (85 pages) deals with cellulose, and is followed by three others of comparable length describing polysaccharides excluding starches from higher land-plants, algae, and bacteria, and by a shorter chapter on polysaccharides from fungi and lichens. (Starches, glycogens, chitins, and mammalian polysaccharides are scheduled for treatment in a final volume.)
The primary aim of the editor, G. 0. Aspinall, was to fill a currently vacant gap in the specialized literature by providing a much needed, authoritative compilation on the polysaccharides, primarily for the benefit of chemists and biochemists, but with the hope that it would also prove of use to the many others who increasingly find themselves in need of a clear, modern, and competent guide. The two volumes that have now been published succeed admirably in their objective. In a brief, introductory chapter, the editor amplifies comments in Vol. 1 on the considerable, and incompletely resolved, problems of classifying and naming the polysaccharides. There is an (apparently slight) inconsistency in the use of infixes "furan" and "pyran" in the naming of glycans, but, where employed, there is clarification and, even where they are avoided, the names used are unambiguous in the context. R. H. Marchessault and P. R. Sundararajan have provided an attractively written and detailed, but uncluttered, chapter on native cellulose, its polymo~hs, and two of its main groups of derivatives (the acetates and nitrates). Other cellulosic derivatives of commercial interest are described in a final chapter on the industrial uses of polysaccharides . The historical, industrial, and biological backgrounds of cellulose are brought to the reader's attention, as is the abundance of cellulose in the ~tentially exploitable land biomass. Studies on native cellulose, on cellulose I, cellulose II, and, to a lesser extent, the other polymorphs, are well described. The problems of elucidating certain aspects of structures, including even those relating to the unit cell of cellulose I, are admirably tackled and, among many topics covered, the polymorphic "dance" of the cellulose molecules during mercerization is outlined and a visual justification given, in two of the excellent plates, to the whimsical, "shishkebab" terminology. Because of the nature of cellulose, most of the studies described had been made by physical means (infrared and n.m.r. spec-