520 The Barer Metals and their Alloys. [March 15, 



peculiar British method of advance to dismiss all metallurgical 

 questions as "industrial," and leave their consideration to private 

 enterprise. 



We are fortunately to spend, I believe, eighteen millions this year 

 on our Navy, and yet the nation only endows experimental research 

 in all branches of science with four thousand pounds. We rightly 

 and gladly spend a million on the Magnificent, and then stand by while 

 manufacturers compete for the privilege of providing her with the 

 armour-pl.ite which is to save her from disablement or destruction. 

 We as a nation are fully holding our own in metallurgical progress, 

 but we might be doing so much more. Why are so few workers 

 studying the rarer metals and their alloys ? Why is the crucible so 

 often abandoned for the test tube ? Is not the investigation of the 

 properties of alloys precious for its own sake, or is our faith in the 

 fruitfulness of the results of metallurgical investigation so weak that, 

 in its case, the substance of things hoped for remains unsought for 

 and unseen in the depths of obscurity in which the metals are left ? 



We must go back to the traditions of Faraday, who was the first 

 to investigate the influence of the rarer metals upon iron, and to 

 prepare the nickel-iron series of which so much has since been heard.* 

 He did not despise research which might possibly tend to useful 

 results, but joyously records his satisfaction at the fact that a 

 generous gift from Wollaston of certain of the " scarce and more 

 valuable metals " enabled him to transfer his experiments from the 

 laboratory in Albemarle Street to the works of a manufacturer at 

 Sheffield. 



Faraday not only began the research I am pleading for to-night, 

 but he gave us the germ of the dynamo, by the aid of which, as we 

 have seen, the rarer metals may be isolated. If it is a source of 

 national pride that research should be endowed apart from the national 

 expenditure, let us, while remembering our responsibilities, rest in 

 the hope that metallurgy will be well represented in the Laboratory 

 which private munificence is to place side by side with our historic 

 Koyal Institution. 



[W. C. R.-A.] 



* In the development of the use of these alloys, the Societe' Ferro-Nickel 

 and Les Usines du Creuzot. deserve special mention. 



