Section B.— CHEMISTRY, GEOLOGY, METALLURGY, 

 MLNERALOGY, AND GEOGRAPHY. 



President of the Section: — H. H. Green, D.Sc, F.C.S. 



WEDNESDAY, JULY g. 



The President delivered the following- address : — 



MODERN CHEMISTRY. 



One of the most cliaracteristic features of the development 

 of modern Chemistry is the steadily ^'rowing tendency to sub- 

 divide. Of recent years this tendencv has been so marked that 

 the various offspring- of the mother science have taken on tl)e 

 aspects of new sciences, and the time has come when no chemist 

 can lay claim to any things like a complete grasp of the subject 

 to which he owes his name. This process of fission is inevitable 

 and has its origin in the nature of the science itself. Beint; a 

 basic science, like Mathematics and Physics, it enters into every 

 department of human activity, and it has become a platitude to 

 say that the chemist lias all Nature for his province Like 

 Mathematics, the science might take for its ideal the compression 

 of the Universe into an equation ; with (^od, mayhap, as only 

 arbitrary variable. 



Tile field of Chemistry is so wide, and the mass of detail 

 so enormous, that no sing'le brain can hope to do more than 

 grasp the underlying principles and methods of the science as a 

 whole, and make itself master of a comparatively small corner. 

 Specialisation has therefore proceeded, particularly in research, 

 to an extraordinary extent; and tlie ramifications of the subject 

 are so complicated that most people have only the haziest notion 

 of the meaning of the word " chemist." 



To the altogether uneducated, the term "chemist"' is 

 synonymous witli that of " pharmacist " or " druggist," and^ 

 indeed, the vendors of stuffs in bottles, compounders of the 

 decoctions prescribed by those skilled in the black art of medicine, 

 have claimed the word for their own. Indeed, so far at one 

 time did the term fix itse'jf in common speech that it passed 

 into legislative use, and, as Sir William Tilden ]x)ints out. '' if 

 Sir Humphry Davy himself were now living he could not 

 legally call himself a chemist, his name not being on the 

 pharmaceutical register. Other lands are more discriminating 

 in their speech — Germany using the word " a|X5theker."" and 

 France the word " p'harmacien," as corresponding to our seldom- 

 used " pharmacist." Far be it from any chemist mind to 

 decry the calling of pharmacy. Properly qualified phiirmacists 

 are proud of the term, since it corresponds to a calling with a 

 definitely recognised, legally protected diploma, and one in which 

 it is now possible to take a university degree. Be it only 



