British Association, 393 



Chemistry. 



In Chemistry I am informed that great activity has been dis- 

 played, especially in the organic department of the science. For 

 several years past processes of substitution (or displacment of one 

 element or organic group by another element or a group, more 

 or less analogous) have been the main agents employed 

 in investigation, and the results to which they have led have 

 been truly wonderful ; enabling the chemist to group together sev- 

 eral compounds of comparatively simple constitution into others 

 much more complex, and thus to imitate, up to a certain point, 

 the phenomena which take place within the growing plant or 

 animal. It is not indeed to be anticipated that the chemist should 

 ever be able to produce by the operations of the laboratory the 

 arrangement of the elements in the forms of the veofetable cell or 

 the animal fibre ; but he may hope to succeed in preparing some 

 of the complex results of secretion or of chemical changes pro- 

 duced within the living organism, — changes which furnish definite 

 crystallizable compounds, such as the forminates and the ace- 

 tates, and which he has actually obtained by operations indepen- 

 dent ot the plant or the animal. 



JVeio Dyes. 



Turning to the practical applications of chemistry, we may refer 

 to the beautiful dves now extracted from aniline, an oro-anic base 

 formerly obtained as a chemical curiosity from the products of the 

 distillation of coal-tar, but now manufactured by the hundred 

 weight in consequence of the extensive demand for the beautiful^ 

 colours known as Mauve, Magenta, and Solferino, which are pre- 

 pared by the action of oxid'zing agents, such as bichromate of 

 potash, corrosive sublimate, and iodide of mercury upon aniline. 



Nor has the inorganic department of chemistry been deprived of 

 of its due share of important advances, Schonbein has continued 

 his investigations upon ozone, and has added many new facts to 

 our knowledge of this interesting substance ; and Andrews and 

 Tait, by their elaborate investigations, have shown that ozone, 

 whether admitted to bean allotropic modification of oxygen or not, 

 is certainly much more dense than oxygen in its ordinary con- 

 dition. 



Geology — Antiquity of man. 



The bearing of some recent geological discoveries on the great 

 question of the high anti4uity of Man was brought before your 

 Can. Nat. 11 No. 5, Yol. V. 



