Section B. 



CHEMISTRY, METALLURGY, AND 



ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, 

 ROBERT C. STICHT, B.Sc, E.M. 



PEOGKESS IN RAPID OXIDATION PROCESSES APPLIED 

 TO COPPER-SMELTING. 



Introductory. — From a modern point of view the older history of 

 chemistry scarcely affords a subject which is calculated to excite a 

 keener regret in the mind of the man of applied science than the scant, 

 one might say, almost step-motherly, support and encouragement 

 which the industrial arts at one time received at the hands of the purer 

 branches of " the science of the composition of substances." The 

 metallurgist especially has a grievance in this respect. Though his 

 pursuit has admittedly supplied the very working bases on which the 

 speculative romance of pure chemistry has exhausted its powers for 

 centuries, still it has not, until comparatively recent years, received 

 anything like a corresponding benefit in return. Notwithstanding 

 that chemistry from its infancy has occupied itself with the phenomena 

 of combustion, calcination, sublimation, solution, fusion, &c., it has 

 generally disdained to concern itself with the larger problems of prac- 

 tical metallurgy. The metallurgical adepts, for their part, lacking 

 the requisite breadth of view, and adversely influenced by the bias 

 which the man of practice so strongly feels against the theorist, doubt- 

 less have been guilty of an equally gross neglect of a more intimate 

 association, and have forfeited the scholastic advantages which a more 

 brotherly attitude would have afforded. Nevertheless, it cannot be 

 denied that the practices of the basic branches of metallurgy reached 

 a creditable state of maturity along purelv empirical lines, in utter 

 independence of all theoretical guidance, long before any semblance 

 of chemical lore was rational enough to be worth listening to. 



But, though often coming later, theory should properly u'timately 

 overtake and outrun practice, from the very nature of its functions, 

 because, of the'two, it alone possesses the faculty of prevision. Thanks 

 to the enlightenment which the disciplinary teachings of an abundance 

 of error have begotten, we feel, at the present time, that this desirable 

 priority of movement has fully established itself, and that theory is 

 leading. Nevertheless, the student interested in the development of 

 the smelting arts cannot but be appalled by the economic wastes which 

 •have accompanied the metallurgical work of even the more recent 

 past as a consequence of imperfect chemical knowledge, and nothing 

 will, in this regard, be more incomprehensible to him than that only 



