ADDRESS. 11 



that were piled around him, and was thus assured that he still continued a 

 denizen of his own planet, and subject to those physical laws to which he 

 had been before amenable, yet at every step he took was met by some 

 novel object, and startled with some strange and portentous production of 

 Nature's fecundity. 



Even so the chemist of the present day, whilst he recognizes in the world 

 of organic life the same general laws which prevail throughout the mineral 

 kingdom, is nevertlieless astonished and perplexed by the multiplicity of new 

 bodies that present themselves, the wondrous changes in them resulting from 

 slight differences in molecular arrangement, and tlie simple nature of the 

 machinery by which such complicated eifects are brought about. 



And as the New World might never have been discovered, or, at all events, 

 would not have been brought under our subjection, without those improve- 

 ments in naval architecture which liad taken place prior to the age of 

 Columbus, so the secrets of organic chemistry would have long remained 

 unelicited, but for the facilities in the methods of analysis which were 

 introduced by Liebig. 



Before his time the determination of tlie component elements of an organic 

 substance was a task of so much skill as well as labour, that only the most 

 accomplished analysts — such men, for instance, as my lamented friend Dr. 

 Prout in this country, or as the great Berzelius in Sweden — could be de- 

 pended upon for such a work ; and hence the data upon which we could rely 

 for deducing any general conclusions went on accumulating with extreme 

 slowness. 



But the new methods of analysis invented by Liebig have so simplified 

 and so facilitated the processes, that a student, after a few months' practical 

 instruction in a laboratory, can, in many instances, arrive at results sufficiently 

 precise to be made the basis of calculation, and thus to enable the master 

 mind, which is capable of availing itself of the facts before it, to breathe life 

 into these dry numerical details, — ^^just as the sculptor, by a few finishing 

 strokes, brings out the expression of the statue, which has been prepared for 

 him by the laborious chiseling of a number of subordinate workmen. 



And as the established laws and institutions of the Old World have been 

 modified — may I not say in some instances rectified? — by the insensible influ- 

 ence of those of the New, so have the principles that had been deduced from 

 the phaenomena of the mineral kingdom undergone in many instances a cor- 

 rection from the new discoveries made in the chemistry of the animal and 

 vegetable creation. 



It was a great step indeed in the progress of the Science, when Lavoisier 

 set the example of an appeal to the balance in all our experimental re- 

 searches, and the Atomic Theory of Dalton may be regarded as the necessary, 

 although somewhat tardy, result of the greater numerical precision thus in- 

 troduced. 



But no less important was the advance achieved, when structure and 

 polarity were recognized as influencing the condition of matter, and when 

 the nature of abodyVas felt to be determined, not only by the proportions of 

 its component elements, but also by their mutual arrangement and colloca- 

 tion — a principle, which, first illustrated amongst the products of organic 

 life, has since been found to extend alike to all chemical substances what- 

 soever. 



Formerly it had been the rule to set down the bodies which form the con- 

 stituents of the substances we analysed, and which had never yet under our 

 hands undergone decomposition, as elementary ; but the discovery of 

 cyanogen in the first instance, and the recognition of several other com- 



d2 



