1887.] on the Work of the Imperial Institute. 107 



tion as the leader in the origination of successive eras of advance 

 in iron and steel manufacture, there is no question that the trade 

 generally has in recent years derived the greatest assistance and 

 benefit from the organisation of the Society which, under the name 

 of the Iron and Steel Institute, has brought the members of the 

 trade to recognise that they themselves, and the country, reap incal- 

 culable benefit from their free interchange of knowledge and the 

 results of experience, their candid discussion of successes, failures, 

 and diversities of views and practice — the combination of friendly 

 rivalry with hearty co-operation in the advancement of the science 

 and practice of their important calling. 



While we have succeeded in maintaining a foremost position 

 in iron and steel manufacture, there are some other important 

 branches of industry, for a time essentially our own, the present 

 condition of which, in this country, we cannot contemplate with equal 

 satisfaction. Several instructive illustrations might be quoted, but 

 I will content myself with a brief examination of one of the most 

 interesting. 



A glance at the history of the utilisation of some products of the 

 distillation of coal will present to us an industry created and first 

 elaborated in England, which has, on the one hand, by its develop- 

 ment effected momentous changes in other industries and in im- 

 portant branches of commerce, while on the other hand it has been 

 in great measure wrested from us in consequence of the systematic 

 collaboration of scientific and practical workers on the Continent. 



In discussing the recent advances made in chemical manufactures 

 as exemplified by the Exhibition of 1851, Playfair, in the lecture to 

 which reference has already been made, spoke of the great development 

 of the value of the evil-smelling tar, which was then made to furnish 

 the solvent liquids benzene and naphtha, and the antiseptic creosote, 

 the residual material being utilised for pavements and for artificial 

 fuel. The chemist little dreamt then that between 1851 and the year 

 of the next gi-eat Exhibition, 1862, coal tar would have become a mine 

 of wealth equally to science, to manufactures and to the arts, in which 

 fresh workings have ever sinco continued to be opened up, and still 

 present themselves for exploration. Hofmann, in his valuable report 

 on the chemical products and processes elucidated by that Exhibition, 

 dwells with the enthusiasm of the ardent worker in science upon the 

 brilliant products obtained from coal tar, which had resulted from 

 the labours of the scientific chemist and had already acquired an 

 almost national importance, although this great industry was then 

 still in its infancy. From the year 1856, when the first colouring 

 matter known as ^auve, was discovered and manufactured by a 

 young student at the College of Chemistry, ]\Ir. Perkin, one of 

 HofmaLn's most promising pupils, to the present time, the produc- 

 tion of new coal-tar colours or of new processes for preparing the 

 known coloui's in gi'eater purity, has progressed uninterruptedly, this 

 industry having long since become one of the most important, and 



