Section B. 

 (cbemistry and mineralogy.) 



President of the Section — Orme Massok, M.A., D.Sc. 



ADDEESS BY THE PRESIDENT. 



llie Gaseous Theory of Solution. 



Plate lY. 



It is a matter of great regret to myself that I am unable to 

 visit Christchurch so as to take part in the meetings of the 

 Chemistry Section, and personally discharge the duties of my 

 office. I greatly value the honour of having been elected to 

 your presidency, and hold it to be one of which much better 

 chemists than myself might well be proud. Nevertheless, had 

 I foreseen my inability to do more than communicate with you 

 by post I should have felt bound to decline the office. As it 

 is, I can but send you cordial greeting, and hearty wishes for a 

 successful meeting, and do what little I can from a distance 

 to contribute to that success. 



It is now about five years since the first active steps were 

 taken to form the Australasian Association wdiich is now hold- 

 ing its third meeting. During that time an immense amount 

 of valuable work in our science has been done in Europe, and a 

 little — I fear a very little, and vastly less than should satisfy 

 our ambition — in Australasia. Not only has our knowledge of 

 the properties and constitutions of individual substances and 

 of whole classes of substances been greatly extended, but new 

 methods of inquiry based on or leading up to ingenious 

 theories have come into vogue. Among such new develope- 

 ments there is one which has already achieved much, and 

 promises to achieve more ; and of this I propose to speak to 

 you now, trusting that the interest of the subject will com- 

 pensate for the poverty of my treatment of it. 



This subject is what may be called the gaseous theory 

 of solution, as developed by Raoult, van't Hoff, Arrhenius, 



