Chemical petrology is essentially the physical chemistry of rocks and associated fluids, although it also borrows heavily from such other sciences as mineralogy. In terms of fundamentals it is firmly grounded in chemical thermodynamics and kinetics. In its treatment of terrestrial environments it grades imperceptably into sedimentology, geochemistry, and geophysics and in extraterrestrial environments into cosmochemistry. It is one of the most important branches of planetology and meteoritics. The unity of approach of thermodynamics and kinetics to processes in these diverse environments is...

The third volume in this series consists of eight chapters. The first three deal with kinetic aspects of compositional variations both within individual phases and across crystal boundaries. Basically, the authors use the kinetic theory and the sparsely available rate data to explain the formation of various types of zoning and the exsolution processes in silicates. Loomis rightly argues that "the kinetic inhibitions to reequilibration that preserve primary igneous crystals and high- grade metamorphic assemblages also affect the crystallization and prograde meta- morphism of these rocks."...