day: geophysical research 259 



entire range of accessible temperatures. There is ao reason to 

 apprehend serious difficulty in applying the same procedure to 

 the commercial ingredients of portland cement, and replacing 

 the present rule-of-thumb methods and uncertain products with 

 dependable cements. The problem of determining the relation 

 of the ingredients in commercial cement and the conditions neces- 

 sary for its successful formation is exactly the same in character 

 as that of determining the conditions of formation of the rocks of 

 the earth. 



A physico-chemical investigation of the sulphide ores over a 

 wide range of temperatures and pressures has also been under- 

 taken, which has developed a large body of exact information of 

 value in mining industry. And such illustrations could be con- 

 tinued almost indefinitely, if it would serve any useful purpose to 

 do so. 



The industrial world is not as a rule interested in scientific 

 principles ; the principle must first be narrowed down to the scope 

 of the industrial requirement before its usefulness is apparent. 

 The immediate effect of an industrial standpoint is therefore to 

 restrict investigation at the risk of losing sight of underlying 

 principles entirely. An illustration of this has come down to 

 us thru the pages of history, of a character to command and 

 receive the utmost respect, for such another can hardly be 

 expected to occur. We have honored the early philosophers 

 for their splendid search after broad knowledge; but in what is 

 now the field of chemistry, they allowed themselves to be turned 

 aside to the pursuit of a single, strictly utilitarian problem,- 

 the transmutation of base metals into gold. The history of 

 chemistry is a history of this one problem from the fourth to the 

 sixteenth century, — twelve centuries before a man arose whose 

 broader standpoint enabled him to divert the fruitless search 

 into other channels from which a science has slowly arisen which 

 is now so broad as to overlap most of the other sciences, and withal 

 so practical that hardly an industry is entirely independent of it. 



The so-called practical questions may therefore as well be left 

 to take care of themselves. There has been no lack of ingenuity 

 in making profitable application of systematic knowledge when- 



