PRACTICAL EDUCATION. 387 



Even tliDUi;!! the land needs farmers, there will always be a 

 good percentage of youths with a mechanical turn of mind. 

 These should he given the opportunity of working" at the 

 bench, the vice, the lathe and the forge, a g'ood course in 

 physics, and a|)plied mechanics, with a good training in 

 mechanical drawing. Then they will be able to hold their 

 own with the imported mechanics and reap the golden reward 

 of industry. When our education makes for the developing 

 of our natural I'esources then may we reckon it has been more 

 or less successfid. 



THE LATE PROFESSOR CANNIZZARO.— In the death 

 of Stanislao I'annizzaro, in his 84th year, which occurred 

 at Rome on the loth of 'Slay. Science loses one of 

 the foreniost builders of nineteenth century chemical 

 philosophy. Close on sixty years have passed since 

 he was ap[)ointed to the chair of chemistry at Pied- 

 mont, and fifty since, he accepted a similar post in his 

 native town of Palermo. The announcement of Kekule's views 

 on structural formulae was then initiating" a new phase in the 

 history of chemical theory, and the entire subject of atomic 

 and equivalent weights was still in a chaotic state. All the 

 uncertaint} ;ind confusion was removed when Cannizzaro 

 showed, in a paper on " The outlines of a course of Chemical 

 Philosophy," which he prepared in 1858, and read two years 

 later, at a memorable meeting at Karlsruhe, that atomic 

 weights could I.^ie determined, and their relations to molecular 

 weights ascertained, by the aid of the specific heat law of 

 Dulong and Petit, and of the hypothesis of Avogadro : indeed 

 it may not be too much to say that Avogadro's hypothesis 

 remained practically unnoticed until Cannizzaro brought its 

 important bearings to light. Cannizzaro's pronouncement, ac- 

 cepted at once, as it was, without question, so decisive and 

 convincing did it appear, rounded off Dalton's atomic theory, 

 and placed the problem of the combining weights in so clear 

 a light as to afford chemical arithmetic that firm basis of un- 

 alterable quatitities which is so fundamental a concep- 

 tion of chenn'cal science to-day, and from that time chemistry 

 has developed steadily along the lines of the structural theory, 

 while the Karlsruhe paper is now one of the classics of the 

 science. 



In addition to his researches in chemical philosophy. Can- 

 nizzaro will ever be remembered as the discoverer of cvanamide, 

 as well as of benzyl alcohol, which he prepared by treating oil 

 of bitter almonds with alcoholic potash. 



In 1871 he became Professor of Chemistry and Director of 

 the Chemical Institute in Rome. In 1872 he delivered the 

 second Faraday Lecture in London, before the Chemical 

 Society. In 1891 the Royal Society awarded him the Copley 

 Medal in recog"nition of the service he had rendered science by 

 his discoveries respecting the relations of atoms and molecules. 

 He was Honorary President of the International Congress of 

 Applied Chemistry held in Rome four years ago. 



