58 president's address — section b. 



a poor century and a quarter have elapsed since the most important 

 chemical phenomenon with which metallurgy concerns itself, viz., 

 oxidation, or combustion in air, came to be rationally interpreted and 

 explained. To modern feeling, swayed perhaps by the strenuousness 

 which pervades the moment, it also seems painfully singular that, 

 prior to this event, a full century of phlogistic romance, unintelligibly 

 neglectful of the evidence of the senses, should, moreover, have stifled 

 the all-important earlier recognition, ushered in by Boyle and defi- 

 nitely formulated by Mayow (1669), that the atmosphere is composed 

 of two principal constituents, one of which is the supporter of life and 

 of the combustion of combustible bodies, while the other is not, but 

 extinguishes both. Time has, however, made amends for all this. 

 We may well deplore the phlogistic period, but we are now on the 

 victorious side of the great conflict which terminated it, and there is 

 no ground for the fear that an equally serious lapse on the part of pure 

 chemistry will ever again impede the onward march of its practical 

 applications, by limiting them essentially to the inefficient sphere of 

 mere empiricism. 



PneumaHc Processes. — It may truly be said that the natural sciences 

 and the arts only began to draw the true breath of life with the dis- 

 covery of oxygen, and the new birth of chemistry in the Lavoisierean 

 theory. An honored predecessor in this chair, Professor Mica Smith, 

 of Ballarat, five years ago gave us a fascinating historico-cheraical 

 address on " The Study of the Chemistry of the Atmosphere, and 

 whither it has led." The scholarly comprehensiveness of that review 

 has tempted me to lay before you a specialised exemplification of the 

 surpassing importance of that study in its bearing on the technology 

 of a single metal, namely, copper. There is a particular pyrometal- 

 lurgical branch of applied science into which this research has thrown 

 a wonderful measure of illumination, and to the creation of which, 

 in fact, after centuries of darkness on so simple a subject, the oxida- 

 tion theory first gave an incentive. 



It may safely be said that the work alluded to was impossible 

 before the nature of the atmosphere was correctly understood. I 

 refer to the so-called " pneumatic processes of smelting," meaning 

 methods of metallurgical treatment in which atmospheric air, or the 

 oxygen in it, is made to play a very special role. In the last instance, 

 nearly all processes of smelting, broadly interpreted, are " pneumatic," 

 since they require the use of air for the production of fusion tempera- 

 tures by means of proper fuels. But, in the more restricted sense, the 

 term is ordinarily used for such processes in which fusion is accom- 

 plished with the aid of fuels other than those commonly comprehended 

 under that name in everyday life. These special combustibles are 

 the metals and the metalloids, and the conventional carbonaceous 

 fuels are generally not even used as accessories. Pneumatic processes 

 may be said to avail themselves of " chemical fuels," a term merely 

 suggested for the sake of a distinction. One absolutely essential feature 

 of the work, which they presuppose, is intensified activity of combina- 

 tion, or accelerated velocity of reaction, without which they are not 



