374 THE CHEMICAL PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY. 



press the disease, but really c^ire it, may be prepared by synthesis. 

 Until then be patient and do not chide chemistry if, for the time beings, 

 she offers only silver instead of gold. 



Events in this field of the great chemical industries are significant. 

 We are the witnesses of a great combat taking place between the older 

 process of Le Blanc for the preparation of soda and the new one of 

 Solvay called the ammonia-soda process. The iutelligence and in- 

 ventive genius of manufacturers have added under the pressure of this 

 competition a large number of improvements to the manufacture of 

 sulphuric acid and of soda, and new and valuable methods for the 

 preparation of chlorine. Here, more than in any other branch of 

 chemical industry, the struggle for existence is fierce. 



The manufacture of iron, that most important chemical industry, is 

 transformed by innovations. The imposing changes wrought by the 

 older process of Bessemer, by the new oue of Thomas, are they not 

 based purely upon chemical reactions ? The grandest application of a 

 a complicated chemical reaction to a great manufacture is, perhaps, 

 the dephosphorizing of pig-iron by lining the Bessemer converter with 

 basic material, an invention which we owe to Thomas and Gilchrist. 

 From this again, agriculture derives an advantage in the use of the 

 Thomas slag containing the phosphorus which heretofore rendered iron 

 ore less valuable. This then is truly a transformation of stone into 

 bread, similar to the older manufacture of soluble fertilizers from 

 mineral phosphates. Nevertheless, the era of bliss which was prophe- 

 sied three years ago at the Berlin meeting of naturalists by our illus- 

 trious colleague, Ferdinand Cohn, has not yet dawned. He held that 

 all struggles for existence amongst men, arising from want of food, (the 

 bread question,) will be done away with, when chemistry shall have 

 learned to prepare starch from carbon dioxide and water. But since 

 time immemorial the farmer is occupied in this very chemical industry, 

 and it would hardly be great progress if the farm were merely replaced 

 by a chemical factory. But we may reasonably hope that chemistry 

 will teach us to make the fiber of wood a source of human food. 



Indeed, if we consider how small is the quantity of starch which the 

 grain furnishes us, and further that the wood fiber has exactly the same 

 chemical composition as starch, we see the possibility of increasing the 

 production of food indefinitely by solving this problem : To transform 

 cellulose into starch. 



It this problem were solved we should find an inexhaustible source 

 of human food in tiie wood of our forests, in grass, and even in straw 

 and chaff". The beautiful researches of Hellriegel have recently dis- 

 closed the fact, whi>ch in former times was disputed, that certain plants 

 transform atmospheric nitrogen into albumin and that this process can 

 be improved by suitable treatment. 



The increase of albumin in plants, according to a plan, together with 

 the production of starch out of cellulose — this would in reality signify 

 the abolition of the bread question. 



