CH. ix ORIGINAL RESEARCH 219 



of this country who has the progress of humanity at 

 heart, to promote and stimulate the growth of original 

 research among us. 



Although as the years roll on the appreciation of the 

 value of research from all points of view is gradually 

 becoming acknowledged, much yet remains to be done. 

 At the meeting of the British Association in 1896, 

 I read a paper on " Chemical Education in this Country 

 and Abroad," in which I had to reiterate the opinion 

 that the value of research is not taken sufficiently to 

 heart by our countrymen, and I there stated my 

 opinion that, if in the early 'fifties our great chemical 

 manufacturers had been able at all to look into the 

 future, there was no reason, for we " had the men and 

 had the money too," why the great colour industry, 

 worth millions of money, should not have been a 

 British instead of a German trade. 



Of all recent discoveries in synthetic chemistry, that 

 of the artificial production of indigo by Baeyer is 

 perhaps the most interesting and important interest- 

 ing because it points the way to the manufacture of 

 valuable products which hitherto have only been found 

 in vegetable or animal organisms ; important from a 

 national point of view because it has already placed the 

 Indian indigo industry in a precarious position. 

 Artificial indigo, like so many other manufactured 

 colouring matters, is prepared from coal-tar. This is 

 not the occasion to enter into a description of the 

 refined and difficult chemical process by which the raw 

 material is made to yield these finished articles. But 

 perhaps a short statement of the case made by me on 

 a Friday evening at the Royal Institution in 1881 may 

 not be out of place. To Englishmen it is a somewhat 

 mortifying reflection that, whilst the raw material from 

 which all these coal-tar colours are made are produced 



