46 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION B. 



and fine chemicals will " come home." Shortly after the out- 

 ^^reak of war, when the dye-houses of Yorkshire and Lancashire 

 were almost at a standstill, and a textile industry worth 200 

 million pounds per annum was embarrassed for the lack of about 

 one million pounds' worth of dye-stuffs, the Government assig^ned 

 a million sterling to an attempt to resuscitate the production of 

 synthetic dyes, and to provision for research into the makino^ of 

 colours from coal-tar hydrocarbons. Further large endowments 

 for general research are promised, and it is being recognized 

 that '' scientific research " is a matter for the State as well as for 

 jjrivate enterprise. It may be mentioned in passing that the 

 nalura! iiidif/o industry is not necessarily past redemption, 

 (jermany's export trade in synthetic indigo rose to about two 

 million sterling in 1913, while the area under cultivation of indigo 

 in India fell from one and a half million acres in iSqy to less 

 than a quarter of a million acres in 1913. But it is not 

 impossible that a little money spent on chemical and botanical 

 research in relation to agriculture might turn the tide, and put 

 the natural indigo in the ])Osition to smash up the synthetic 

 industry. It must not be forgotten how Germany built up her 

 trade in sugar from beet, and the important part played by the 

 breeding of high-sugar roots, and the utilisation of waste products 

 of the sugar factories. 



Leaving now the domain of Organic Chemistry, we may 

 consider Inorganic Chemistry, or the chemistry of the non- 

 carbon compounds. This branch of chemistry is also an 

 enormously wide one. and concerns an enormous number of 

 compounds — all the compounds of some ninty odd elements. 

 Every chemist must, of course, have a thorough grounding in 

 inorganic chemistry; but, again, no modern chemist professes 

 to cover in detail the whole field. The modern investigator or 

 practitioner finds it necessary to limit himself, after his broad 

 general training in all branches of chemistry, to some one section. 

 He may, for instance, devote his attention to the chemistry 

 of metals, and become a " metallurgist '" ; to that of minerals, and 

 become a " mineral chemist," or to anv other section, and label 

 himself with an appropriate name. Inorganic chemical pro- 

 cesses underlie so many of our industries that it is impossible 

 to enumerate them here ; the production of the metals, including 

 gold ; of steel and special alloys ; of the gigantic alkali and acid 

 requirements; of artificial manures; of incandescent mantles; of 

 a thousand and one articles of every-dav use. 



The third big sub-division of Chemistry is " Physical 

 Chemistry," a section of the science overlapping into physics. 

 It includes what is termed " chemical statics " and " chemical 

 dynamics," and the relationship between chemical properties and 

 physical properties ; position of equilibria in chemical reaction, 

 speed of chemical reaction, and influence of mass as well as of 

 chemical structure of reacting materials, optical and electrical 

 properties of substances, ultimate constitution of matter, and 

 so forth. It lies at the root of all chemical theory, whatever 



