694 Prof. Boscoe on Indigo, dc. [May 27, 1881. 



It is quite possible that in an analogous way a variety of shades of 

 blue may be ultimately obtained from substituted indigos, and thus 

 our catalogue of coal-tar colours may be still further increased. 



To Englishmen it is a somewhat mortifying reflection, that whilst 

 the raw materials from which all these coal-tar colours are made are 

 produced in our country, the finished and valuable colours are nearly 

 all manufactured in Germany. The crude and inexpensive materials 

 are, therefore, exported by us abroad, to be converted into colours 

 having many hundred times the value, and these exjDensive colours 

 have again to be bought by English dyers and calico printers 

 for use in our staple industries. The total annual value of manu- 

 factured coal-tar colours amounts to about three and a half 

 millions ; and as England herself, though furnishing all the raw 

 material, makes only a small fraction of this quantity, but uses a 

 large fraction, it is clear that she loses the profit on the manufacture. 

 The causes of this fact, which we must acknowledge, viz. that 

 Germany has driven England out of the field in this important branch 

 of chemical manufacture, are probably various. In the first place, there 

 is no doubt that much of the German success is due to the long- 

 continued attention which their numerous Universities have paid 

 to the cultivation of Organic Chemistry as a pure science. For 

 this is carried out with a degree of completeness, and to an extent 

 to which we in England are as yet strangers. Secondly, much again 

 is to be attributed to the far more general recognition amongst 

 German than amongst English men of business of the value, from 

 a merely mercantile point of view, of high scientific training. In 

 proof of this it may be mentioned, that each of two of the largest 

 German colour-works employs no less a number than from twenty- 

 five to thirty highly educated scientific chemists, at salaries varying 

 from 250Z. to 500Z. or 600/. per annum. A third cause which doubtless 

 exerts a great infiuence in this matter is the English law of patents. 

 This, in the special case of colouring matters at least, offers no 

 protection to English patentees against foreign infringement, for when 

 these colours are once on the goods they cannot be identified. 

 Foreign infringers can thus lower the price so that only the patentee, 

 if skilful, can compete against them, and no English licencees of the 

 patent can exist. This may to some extent account for the reluctance 

 which English capitalists feel in embarking in the manufacture of 

 artificial colouring matters. That England possesses both in the 

 scientific and in the practical direction ability equal to the occasion 

 none can doubt. But be that as it may, tlie whole honour of the 

 discovery of artificial indigo belongs to Germany and to the dis- 

 tinguished chemist Professor Adolf Baeyer, whilst towards the 

 solution of the difficult problem of its economic manufacture the 

 first successful steps have been taken by Dr. Caro and the Baden 

 Aniline and Soda Works of Mannheim. 



[H. E. E.J 



