56 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION B. 
have been obtained by examination of Australasian products, and 
then shortly to touch upon some of those great chemical questions 
which are being more and more forced upon our notice by the 
far-reaching generalisations to which they point. 
There are, of course, two lines on which an inquiry as 
regards Australasian products might proceed, viz., the purely 
utilitarian and the purely scientific. If, in this address, 
preference is given to the latter, it is not from any desire 
to undervalue the former, but partly because I have elsewhere 
given prominence to the importance of the application of 
science to practice, and because, as I believe, the greatest 
discoveries in chemical science in recent years, which have also 
been of great practical importance, have not been the result 
of accident, but the outcome of long and patient investigation 
in realms of work at one time most unpromising as regards useful 
issues, and, moreover, because one object of this Association, 
as J understand it, is the prosecution of scientific knowledge for 
its own sake, quite irrespective of the question whether it will 
immediately yield payable results or not. The perpetual cry, 
“Cut bono?’ which would never be uttered if those who make 
use of it had any real idea of the history of the discoveries of the 
past, is most discouraging to those of us who are endeavouring to 
prosecute scientific work in these colonies, where it is exceedingly 
difficult to rouse interest in anything which does not immediately 
lead to material profit in one shape or another. May I not, in this 
connection, take the opportunity of urging upon all scientific 
teachers to use every endeavour to impress upon their students 
the historical developments of such discoveries as I have 
referred to ? 
Entering now upon the consideration of the chemistry of plant 
products, Iam sure you will, in the first place, joi with me in 
paying a hearty tribute of praise to the very valuable preliminary 
work which has been accomplished in the region of plant 
chemistry by our President and his collaborateurs, and to that 
more recent and most valuable bibliography of the subject 
contained in the “ Useful Native Plants of Australia,” lately 
compiled by Mr. Maiden, curator of the Technological Museum 
of New South Wales. 
Among the more important products, those obtained from the 
“everlasting gum-tree ” first claim our attention. In a remarkable 
series of researches carried out in the laboratory of the University 
of Bonn, Wallach has succeeded in reducing to something like 
order and system the confusion which has hitherto existed in our 
knowledge of that class of hydrocarbons known as the terpenes, 
and has revealed some most interesting facts about the relation- 
ships of these substances to one another, especially with reference 
to their optical properties. He has shown that some of these 
substances exist in what may be termed pairs, one of each pair 
