300 HONOR LIST OF CHEMISTS. 



This country is too big to remain a dependency of Ger- 

 man Chemistry, especially when that Chemistry is such as 

 it is to-day. 



The worst permanent damage is done by the encourage- 

 ment of German ways in University Organization and 

 Scientific Work of the Nation and the States. To copy the 

 German Army System would not prove as bad as what has 

 been and is now being done to the scientific life of America. 



What is needed, is a manly independence of thought, not 

 a servile imitation of an Imperial Pattern. 



The Imitation of the Royal Institution (only Royal in 

 name, being founded and maintained by sturdy burghers of 

 London) would be more wholesome than the copying of the 

 formalisms of the Universities of the German Empire, with 

 its t{ theses" and learning in airy heights without visible 

 means of support in nature or in mathematics. 



Finally, if we compare the teutonic nations to the 

 romanic, we have twenty-two of the first to five of the latter 

 in our honor list. For the twelve fundamental workers, the 

 proportion is eleven to one. 



May this book definitely remove the noxious weeds that 

 have grown around the chemical monument erected by 

 Berzelius, and may the best and truest chemist also of old 

 Germany again join in solid work, worthy of the great 

 master: then we shall soon learn the true value of the 

 absolute atomic weight of those elements for which, at 

 present, we lack the necessary experimental data. 



