Dr. Theng"s prizewinning text is the first to deal comprehensively with the relatively young science of clay-organic reactions, although complex formation between clays and organic substances has been known since antiquity.It was only in the 1940"s that interactions between clays and organic materials began to be studied ; aided by the techniques of infra-red spectroscopy and X-ray diffractometry, a self-consistent pattern of these systems has now begun to emerge, and understanding of the underlying mechanisms has considerably progressed.In view of their great technological importance in agriculture and industry, clay-organic systems have attracted the attention of workers in fields ranging from soil-science to colloid chemistry: for them this book should become the standard source of information in a young and growing science.