LABORATORIES FOR SPECIAL PURPOSES 59 



of all countries ; chemical, botanical, pharmacognostical, 

 medical, and technical cyclopaedias," etc. 



This firm has issued for many years a semi-annual report 

 which contains not only information of commercial importance, 

 but the results of scientific work which in any way bears on the 

 subject of manufacture, whether proceeding from their own 

 laboratory or from the published works in any part of the world. 

 Such reports doubtless savour of advertisement, and are in- 

 tended to have that effect. Manufacturers who produce such 

 publications may be trusted to reserve information which they 

 think likely to be of value to rivals in business. Nevertheless 

 the reports give a survey of the whole field which has its value 

 to the world outside. 



The laboratories which have been described in the foregoing 

 pages are chosen as representative because it is believed that 

 they represent various types. But it must not be inferred that 

 they are the only large and well-equipped establishments in the 

 world or in the British Empire. During the last thirty years or 

 more a number of new colleges and universities in the British 

 Isles alone have been called into existence, and in 1912 it was 

 estimated that the universities and technical schools together 

 numbered nearly three hundred. If to these are added the very 

 large number of spacious, well-fitted, modern laboratories for 

 instruction in chemistry, independently of physics and other 

 subjects, which are to be found in the great schools of England, 

 there can be no doubt that opportunities are not wanting for 

 those who are in a position to make use of them. Nor in a certain 

 sense is there a lack of support and appreciation of the w r ork, but 

 this comes unfortunately from a comparatively small number of 

 enlightened people who know something of the purposes, aims, 

 and methods of the scientific chemist. There is some reason to 

 hope, however, that the importance of the study of chemistry not 

 only for the sake of its useful applications, but as giving a new 

 view of the natural world, will ultimately be recognised everywhere. 



Even in this time of upheaval when the machinery of civilisa- 

 tion is out of gear and the man of science is called away from 

 his peaceful studies to the practice of war, we hear of new 

 laboratories being built for the University of Oxford, for Uni- 

 versity College, London, and developments elsewhere. As will 

 be shown in the later chapters of the book vast fields are open 



