366 



NATURE 



[December 2, 1915. 



in those fundamental industries upon which our 

 national prosperity ultimately depends — have re- 

 cently succeeded in effecting among themselves 

 is ominous of impending revolution — to break out, 

 it may be, when the time of inflated wages comes 

 to a stoppage and when the country is suffering 

 from the industrial depression which inevitably 

 .awaits it. 



Anything, then, which tends to open our eyes 

 to fresh possibilities and new departures in pro- 

 duction is to be welcomed. Hitherto our main 

 chemical industries have been on too restricted 

 lines. Our manufacturers have mostly confined 

 . their efforts to the limited class of products known 

 as "heavy chemicals," and have paid little heed 

 to the production of many things which modern 

 civilisation and recent industrial development re- 

 quires. It is a notorious fact that with us the 

 application of organic chemistry to chemical in- 

 dustry has been painfully slow, and it is very 

 problematical whether we shall ever succeed in 

 regaining a position which at one time was well 

 within our grasp if our manufacturers had pos- 

 sessed the perspicacity, knowledge, and skill re- 

 quired to retain it. But even in many of the 

 newer applications of inorganic chemistry to in- 

 dustrial pursuits we have let slip opportunities 

 which a little energy, enterprise, and foresight 

 might have secured. 



Mr. Sydney Johnstone's monograph on "The 

 Rare Earth Industry " affords a striking illustra- 

 tion of this fact. We were the pioneers in gas 

 lighting, but Carl Auer's discovery, twenty-five 

 years ago, of the effect of certain "earths" in 

 enhancing the illuminating power of a gas flame, 

 was to us as seed falling by the wayside. Certain 

 of our men of science, notably the late Sir George 

 Stokes, attracted by the remarkable phenomena 

 which Auer von Welsbach's discovery revealed, 

 probably recognised, and in other circumstances 

 might even have succeeded in making more gener- 

 ally known, the possibilities that were latent in 

 it. But Stokes moved in an orbit in which manu- 

 facturers as a class never enter. Such is the gulf 

 existing in this country between science and in- 

 dustry that probably not one in a hundred of them 

 had even heard of his existence. He was as far 

 removed from them, in fact, as an archangel from 

 an apothecary — or at least that type of apothecary 

 whose chief concern is with an " effective window 

 display " and the profits of "leading side-lines." 



We have prided ourselves In the past on being 

 pre-eminently industrial inorganic chemists, but 

 until quite recently practically the whole of the 

 thorium nitrate required for the world's consump- 

 tion of gas-mantles was made in Germany. 

 German financial houses acquired control of the 

 NO. 2405, VOL. 96] 



Brazilian output of monazite, and German 

 chemists worked out the methods of extraction 

 of thoria. Important deposits of monazite, con- 

 taining twice as much thoria as the Brazilian 

 mineral, are found in southern India, particularly 

 in Travancore. Prior to the war, practically the 

 whole of the exported product found its way to 

 Germany, although India is a British possession. 

 More recently France and the United States have 

 entered the lists against Germany, but compara- 

 tively little thorium nitrate seems to be made in 

 this country. And yet the total consumption of 

 incandescent mantles is stated to be 300 millions 

 per annum, of which, in 191 3, the United King- 

 dom imported to the value of 302,576^. 



As Mr. Johnstone points out, the term "rare 

 earth," as applied to ceria and thoria, is now a 

 misnomer, as these substances, together with 

 certain of the earths associated with them, are 

 now obtginable in larger quantities and at a 

 cheaper price than many compounds of the so- 

 called "common" elements. The extraordinary 

 development of the new industry may be 

 gathered from the fact that, whereas the cost of 

 thorium nitrate in 1894 was looZ. per kilo. Its 

 price in the United Kingdom in June, 1914, was 

 185. per kilo. 



The account of the thorium and cerium In- 

 dustry, including the manufacture of incandescent 

 mantles and pyrophoric alloys, occupies above 

 one-third of the book under review. Most of the 

 remainder Is concerned with the industrial uses 

 of titanium, zirconium, tantalum, columblum 

 (which the author miscalls niobium), and tungsten, 

 to which is appended a short description of the 

 incandescent electric glow-lamp industry. There 

 are a few pages relating to the economic uses of 

 uranium and vanadium, and Dr. Alexander S. 

 Russell contributes a concise account of the 

 present state of the industry of radio-active sub- 

 stances. The authors have succeeded in putting 

 together a most interesting monograph on matters 

 to which the ordinary text-books have hitherto 

 done scant justice. Their work affords a valu- 

 able object-lesson of the potentialities which may 

 exist in even the most recondite of chemical 

 subjects. 



The volume on " Industrial Nitrogen Com- 

 pounds and Explosives," by the editor and Mr. 

 Barbour, is scarcely commensurate with the large 

 and important theme with which It deals. It is 

 utterly impossible to deal adequately in the space 

 assigned with so comprehensive a subject as that 

 which Includes the nitrate industry, the manu- 

 facture of nitric acid, ammonia and ammoniacal 

 salts, synthetic ammonia, the cyanamlde industry, 

 the production of cyanides and prussiates, and 



