58 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION B. 



for the plantation areas to turn to providing nutriment for those 

 tramping over the synthetic enemy. 



So much, then, for the ramifications of chemistry, that most 

 basic of sciences {pace sister Physics and brother Mathematics), 

 pursued for her own sake by the pundit, cultivated for ulterior 

 motives by the vs^orldly-minded (pace all sensible people) ; life- 

 time study for her devotees, first-year nuisance for the practis- 

 mg professions (pace Mr. Doctorman, member not of the 

 " oldest profession in the world," but of the one with the 

 strongest trade-union). 



These ramifications of the science have only been touched 

 upon, but should suffice to show the fashion in which the pure 

 science is throwing out tentacles to other sciences ; itself suffer- 

 ing fission and then conjugation; narrowing by specialisation and 

 widening by encroachment. On the one side the science has an 

 Octopus aspect; on the other it suggests the primordial proto- 

 plasm of the evolutionary tree. It must have been the Octopus 

 aspect which appalled Mr. Warington Smythe when, in a witty 

 comment upon Dr. Juritz's presidential address last year, he 

 murmured, " What a miserable worm every one of us who is not 

 a chemist must feel !" But it is the protoplasmic activity of the 

 science which concerns the world. 



It has been shown that specialisation in Chemistr}' is in- 

 evitable ; that there is no such thing as the " compleat chvmvst " 

 as there was a century ago, when all that was known could come 

 within the compass of a single brain, and the principles involved 

 were easily grasped. 



Remains then the question of how to educate the specialists. 

 In the past this question has been allowed to settle itself, and 

 the borderlines of sciences were left to individual enterprise. 

 The exponent of one science wa'^ left to overlap into another 

 as curiosity, fate, or gambling instinct, led. 



The pure chemist passed into applied chemistry by following 

 a point of contact with another science, and then becoming a 

 master of the new field. One of the foremost agricultural 

 chemists of the present day was a pure chemist, who became 

 interested in the borderline by the cultivation of roses. Other 

 agricultural chemists, men who have built up the science, are 

 such by decree of fate; happened to get jobs which brought 

 them into contact with agriculture, and compelled the acquiring 

 of the requisite knowledge of that subject. 



In the Industries the pure chemist of the older generation 

 suffered metamorphosis into the industrial chemist by the 

 necessity for grasping the essentials of an industry which he 

 was called upon to help. Very often downright cupiditv was 

 the motive power, and cases are not uncommon of a pure chemist 

 patenting an idea and then turning manufacturer in order to 

 exploit it. In transition he had frequently to develop into a 

 very presentable engineer. Sometimes the hybrid resulted from 

 the manufacturer turning chemist, but this was less frequent 



