Book excerpt: To this Eighth Edition of the late Mr William Gardner‘s Chemical Synonyms and trade Names there have been added some 3,300 new entries, principally in the field of plastics, alloys and pharmaceuticals. A number of entries describing products known to the Editors to be no longer commercially available have been deleted, with the principal object of keeping the bulk of the book within reasonable bounds; but it has been possible to add nearly 400 names to the Index of Manufacturers to be found at the end of the book. The sum of these additions and deletions represents a net increase of about 10 per cent, in the scope of this Eighth Edition as compared with its predecessor published in 1971.