panded to enable the student to understand fully the
underlying reason for each step prescribed. The use of the book
should, nevertheless, be supplemented by classroom instruction, mainly
of the character of recitations, and the student should be taught to
consult larger works. The general directions are intended to emphasize
those matters upon which the beginner in quantitative analysis must
bestow special care, and to offer helpful suggestions. The student
can hardly be expected to appreciate the force of all the statements
contained in these directions, or, indeed, to retain them all in
the memory after a single reading; but the instructor, by frequent
reference to special paragraphs, as suitable occasion presents itself,
can soon render them familiar to the student.

The analyses selected for practice are those comprised in the first
course of quantitative analysis at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and have been chosen, after an experience of years,
as affording the best preparation for more advanced work, and as
satisfactory types of gravimetric and volumetric methods. From the
latter point of view, they also seem to furnish the best insight into
quantitative analysis for those students who can devote but a limited
time to the subject, and who may never extend their study beyond the
field covered by this manual. The author has had opportunity to test
the efficiency of the course for use with such students, and has found
the results satisfactory.

In place of the usual custom of selecting simple salts as material for
preliminary practice, it has been found advantageous to substitute, in
most instances, approximately pure samples of appropriate minerals or
industrial products. The difficulties are not greatly enhanced, while
the student gains in practical experience.

The analytical procedures described in the following pages have been
selected chiefly with reference to their usefulness in teaching the
subject, and with the purpose of affording as wide a variety of
processes as is practicable within an introductory course of this
character. The scope of the manual precludes any extended attempt to
indicate alternative procedures, except through general references to
larger works on analytical chemistry. The author is indebted to the
standard works for many suggestions for which it is impracticable to
make specific acknowledgment; no considerable credit is claimed by him
for originality of procedure.