THE CHEMICAL PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY. 373 



What we want is : new methods for recognizing the individuality of 

 substances. Tlie black substauces of eartby nature, the innumerable 

 formless and resinous products in the bodies of plants and animals, 

 the coloring matter which gives beauty to flowers, all of these to-day 

 mock our efforts to know them ; they will form a new and inexhaustible 

 field for the prosecution of chemical research, when methods shall have 

 been found with which to begin this research. 



And as in organic chemistry, so in mineral chemistry every step leads 

 to questions which we have as yet no means of answering. The syn- 

 thesis of minerals and of rocks has made important progress, it is true, 

 and this as well as the application of the doctrine of structure to the 

 study of mineral species gradually leads to the understanding of their 

 constitution; but we are as yet unable to use, in the study of min- 

 erals, the method of analytical decomposition which has been so success- 

 fully used to study the constitution of organic substances, and above 

 all we lack the least knowledge in regard to the true molecular iceight 

 of minerals. 



Quite recently we have been presented with no less than three new 

 and fruitful methods for the determination of the molecular weight, but 

 not one of them gives us an indication of the true molecular weight of 

 the most simple oxides, such as silicic anhydride or calcium oxide. 



We know to day very well that silicic anhydride can not have the 

 formula SiOa, that this must be multiplied by a very large factor; but 

 of the numerical value of this latter we have no indication. And thus 

 also in mineral chemistry we must aim not exclusively at finding new 

 facts, but new methods of research in the first place, if a period of new 

 discoveries is to be attained in this branch of our science. 



But how cau we conclude this brief review without mentioning also 

 the applications of chemistry to the industrial arts, the progress of which 

 has mainly contributed to spread the splendor of our science most 

 widely ? The infinite variety of the tar colors, surpassing the colors of 

 flowers in number and brightness, is daily increased by new discoveries. 

 The technology of these dyes and pigments forms the most brilliant 

 triumph of purely scientific laboratory work applied to manufactures. 

 This industry in the simplest manner and on the largest scale performs 

 the synthesis of compounds the complex nature of which is indicated 

 by the names they bear. The unscientific man is frightened when a 

 beautiful and brilliant dye is referred to as Hexamethylmethoxytriamido- 

 triphenylcarbinol; for the initiated there lies in this unpleasant name 

 a full account of the synthesis and the constitution of the dye. 



Industry has learned to derive not only colors, but healing medicines 

 also from coal tar. Antipyrin, discovered by Kuorr, upon the basis of 

 Emil Fischer's fundamental research upon the hydrazines, brings to 

 thousands sufifering from fever, relief at least — if not cure. Let us hope 

 that the time is not far distant when real fever curatives, which like 

 the natural alkaloids of the cinchona bark, not only temporarily sup- 



