A TRIBUTE TO SQUANTO 353 



NOT MUCH PROMISE FROM SYNTHETIC FOODS. 



I have not considered at all in this relation the possi- 

 bility of producing foods and other agricultural prod- 

 ucts by direct synthesis in chemical laboratories. We 

 must realize the fact that chemistry has made great ad- 

 vances in this direction within the last few years. The 

 chasm between the organic and the inorganic has been 

 completely bridged over, and it is possible now for the 

 chemist to commence with inorganic materials and to 

 proceed step by step until he is able to form from them 

 true organic compounds. In this way alcohols, sugars 

 and glycerids have already been produced, and the 

 chemist of to-day is attacking vigorously the problem of 

 building up compounds as complicated as the proteins. 

 I am not a believer, however, in the possibility of chem- 

 istry ever displacing agriculture and forming from the 

 inorganic elements all the food necessary for man and 

 beast. Lately, in an address before the American 

 Chemical Society, in Boylston Hall of Harvard Uni- 

 versity, I reviewed this whole subject, and it is not nec- 

 essary now to do more than refer to it. In that address 

 I said: 



" According to Berthelot, the fields which are now 

 defaced by agriculture will be beautified by regaining 

 their natural covering and the earth will be one vast 

 park of pleasure and the chemist the great conservator 

 of the human race. 



" In all the instances brought forth there is not the 

 slightest approach to anything to justify the prophecy 

 of a period of artificial food. The few cases of synthe- 

 sis in which the products approach the composition of 

 anything digestible present such insurmountable diffi- 

 culties in expense and supervision as to render any 



