A comprehensive treatment, covering principles, techniques, apparatus, and applications. The emphasis is on the practical aspects. The author, who is one of the pioneer workers in this field, describes in detail the large amount of work by other researchers, and summarizes data in many convenient tables. His references run into the thousands. Part of a series on laboratory techniques used by research chemists for the study of organic compounds. Contents: Introduction. history, and general description. Commercially prepared adsorbents for thin-layer chromatography. Preparation of the plates. Spotting the sample. Developing the chromatogram. Reactions on plates. Detection of colorless compounds. Documentation. Reproducibility of Rf values. Preparative chromatography. Quantitative analysis. Combination of thin-layer chromatograpliy with other techniques. Acids. Alcohols and glycols. Alkaloids. Amines. Amino acids, proteins. and peptides. Antibiotics. Carbohydrates. Carbonyl compounds. Dyes. Hydrocarbons. Lipids. Nucleic acids and nucleotides. pesticides. Pharmaceutical products. Phenols. Natural pigments. Steroids. Terpenes and essential oils. Vitamins. Miscellaneous. Inorganic ions. Appendix: Addresses of commercial firms cited in the text. Subject index. -- AATA