The Tendencies of Chemistry 



numerous and so precise are the conclusions 

 which may be drawn from these calculations 

 that in the case of certain series of bodies the 

 mere examination of the formula enables us 

 to determine exactly all their physical con- 

 stants and to predict even their colour. 



Descriptive chemistry is on dead science, 

 it is alive and is developing under our eyes. 

 Of the two thousand memoirs regarding the 

 chemistry of metals, which annually sum up 

 the chemist's work, over three-quarters are 

 devoted to new or imperfectly - known com- 

 pounds. For a chemist who knows his business 

 it is a comparatively easy, almost a mechanical 

 task to fill the gaps in series of compounds 

 or to study in a state of increased purity bodies 

 previously known. The hope of industrial or 

 therapeutic applications stimulates the zeal of 

 the discoverers of new bodies, and these hopes 

 find their justification in the four hundred 

 patents taken out every year for industrial 

 applications of chemistry. 



The recent progress of physics has also 

 thrown open to classical chemistry a domain 



full of interest. Until quite recently chemists 



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