46 CHEMICAL DISCOVER^ AND INVENTION 



is the connection of the water baths and drying ovens with 

 supply cisterns fitted with ball-taps by which they are kept full 

 of water, and there is no danger of running dry or unnecessary 

 waste of water. 



It will be gathered from this brief account that the j oint chemical 

 and metallurgical department of the University of Sydney is a 

 compact and efficient establishment not comparable as to size 

 with some of the laboratories in other countries, but serving 

 for the present the needs of the colony, though in all probability 

 large additions will be necessary before long. About 200 

 students work in the laboratories ; apart from those who attend 

 lectures only. 



VI. CHEMICAL LABORATORIES OF THE FEDERAL POLYTECHNIC, 



ZURICH 



The Zurich Polytechnic owes its fame as a school of chemistry 

 to a succession of distinguished teachers, among whom may be 

 mentioned Johannes Wislicenus, Victor Meyer, Arthur Hantzsch, 

 Richard Willstatter, and Georg Lunge. Their work in pure and 

 applied chemistry, of which a large part was done in the labora- 

 tories in Zurich, and before their removal to other universities, 

 is among the most brilliant to be found in the literature of 

 chemistry. 



The chemical laboratories and lecture rooms occupy the whole 

 of one large building divided into two wings, which are devoted 

 respectively to general and analytical chemistry on the one side, 

 and technical or applied chemistry on the other. The former 

 division need not be described in any detail inasmuch as the 

 arrangements and fittings do not differ in essential particulars 

 from those of the other large laboratories elsewhere, some of 

 which have already been illustrated in previous pages. The 

 laboratories for applied chemistry are under the direction of a 

 separate professor, and are arranged with the idea of providing 

 not only for purely scientific and analytical operations, but for 

 manufacture, though of course on a reduced scale, of many 

 products of industrial chemistry. The students, as a rule, are 

 required to devote their first year chiefly to analytical work, 

 but in the second year they are occupied exclusively in the 

 production of chemical compounds by processes of technical 

 interest. Similar studies engage them during the third year, 

 while in the fourth they undertake research on some subject 



