4IO 



NATURE 



[August 25, 1892 



v^etation and its animal life, into the full service of man, 

 making the knowledge of creation a rich portion of his in- 

 heritance, in mind and estate, in reason and in conduct, for life 

 present and life to come. To know creation is to be taught of 

 God. 



I have spoken of the century of beginning chemical labour, 

 and have referred to the divisions and specialities of chemical 

 study. What can I say of the means of uniting the earlier and 

 later years of the past, as well as the separated pursuits of the 

 present, in one mobile working force ? Societies of science are 

 among these means, and it becomes us to magnify their office. 

 For them, however, all tliat we can do is worth more than all we 

 can say. And there are other means, even more effective than 

 associations. Most necessary of all the means of unification in 

 science is the use of its literature. 



It is by published communication that the worker is enabled 

 to begin, not where the first investigation began, but where the 

 last one left off. The enthusiast who lacks the patience to con- 

 sult books, presuming to start anew all by himself in science, 

 has need to get on faster than Antoine L. Lavoisier did when 

 he began, an associate of the French Academy in 1768. He of 

 immortal memory, after fifteen eventful years of momentous 

 labour, reached only such a combustion of hydrogen as makes 

 a very simple class experiment at present. But however early 

 in chemical discovery, Lavoisier availed himself of contempo- 

 raries. They found oxygen, he learned oxidation : one great 

 man was not enough, in 1774, both to reveal this element and 

 show what part it takes in the formation of matter. The honour 

 of Lavoisier is by no means the less that he used the results of 

 others, it might have been the more had he given their results a 

 more explicit mention. Men of the largest original power make 

 the most of the results of other men. Discoverers do not 

 neglect previous achievement, however it may appear in bio- 

 graphy. The masters of science are under the limitations of 

 their age. Had Joseph Priestley lived in the seventeenth century 

 he had not discovered oxygen. Had August Kekule worked in 

 the period of Berzelius, some other man would have set forth 

 the closed chain of carbon combination, and Kekule, we may 

 be sure, would have done something else to clarify chemistry. 

 Such being the limitations of the masters, what contributions 

 can be expected in this age from a worker who is without the 

 literature of his subject ? 



In many a town some solitary thinker is toiling intensely over 

 some self-imposed problem, devoting to it such sincerity and 

 strength as should be of real service, while stiil he obtains no 

 recognition. Working without books, unaware of memoirs on 

 the theme he loves, he tries the task of many with the strength 

 of one. Such as he sometimes send communications to this 

 Association. An earnest worker, his utter isolation is quite 

 enough to convert him into a crank. To every solitary investi- 

 gator I should desire to say, get to a library of your subject, 

 learn how to use its literature, and possess yourself of what there 

 is on the theme of your choice, or else determine to give it up 

 altogether. You may get on very well without college labora- 

 tories, you can survive it if unable to reach the meetings of men 

 of learning, you can do without the counsel of an authority, but 

 you can hardly be a contributor in science except you gain the 

 use of its literature. 



First in importance to the investigator are the original 

 memoirs of previous investigators. The chemical determinations 

 of the century have been imported by their authors in the 

 periodicals. The serials of the years, the continuous living re- 

 positories of all chemistry, at once the oldest and the latest of 

 its publications, these must be accessible to the worker who 

 would add to this science. A library for research is voluminous, 

 and portions of it are said to be scarce, nevertheless it ought to 

 be largely supplied. The laboratory itself is not more impor- 

 tant than the library of science. In the public libraries of our 

 cities, in all colleges now being established, the original litera- 

 ture of science ought to be planted. It is a wholesome literature, 

 at once a stimulant and a corrective of that impulse to discovery 

 that is frequent among the people of this country. That a good 

 deal of it is in foreign languages is hardly a disadvantage ; there 

 ought to be some exercise for the modern tongues that even the 

 public high schools are teaching. That the sets of standard 

 journals are getting out of print is a somewhat infirm objection. 

 They have no right to be out of print in these days when they 

 give us twenty pages of blanket newspaper at breakfast, and 

 offer us Scott's novels in full for less than the cost of a day's 

 entertainment. As for the limited editions of the old sets, until 



reproduced by new types, they may be multiplied through 

 photographic methods. When there is a due demand for the 

 original literature of chemistry, a demand in accord with the 

 prospective need for its use, the supply will come, let us believe, 

 more nearly within the means of those who require it than it 

 now does. 



What I have said of the literature of one science can be said, 

 in the main, of the literature of the other sciences. And other 

 things ought to be said, of what is wanted to make the literature 

 of science more accessible to consulting readers. A great deal 

 of indexing is ivanted. Systematic bibliography, both of previous 

 and of current literature, would add a third to the productive 

 power of a large number of workers. It would promote common 

 acquaintance with the original communications of research, and 

 a general demand for the serial sets. Topical bibliographies 

 are of great service. In this regard I desire to ask attention to 

 the annual reports of the committee on Indexing Chemical 

 Literature, in this association for nine years past, as well as to 

 recent systematic undertakings in geology, and like movements 

 in zoology and other sciences. Also to the Index Medicus, as 

 a continuous bibliography of current professional literature. 



Societies and institutions of science may well act as patrons to 

 the bibliography of research, the importance of which has been 

 recognized by the fathers of this Association. In 1855, Joseph 

 Henry, then a past president of this body, memorialized ttie 

 British Association for cooperation in bibliography, offering that 

 aid of the Smithsonian Institution which has so often been 

 afforded to publications of special service. The British Associa- 

 tion appointed a committee, who reported in 1857, after which 

 the undertaking was proposed to the Royal Society. The Royal 

 Society made an appeal to her Majesty's Government, and ob- 

 tained the necessary stipend. Such was the inception of the 

 Royal Society Catalogue of scientific papers of this century, in 

 eight quarto volumes, as issued in 1867 and 1877. Seriously 

 curtailed from the generous plan of the committee who proposed 

 it, limited to the single feature of an index of authors, it 

 is nevertheless of great help in literary search. Before any 

 list of papers, however, we must place a list of the serials that 

 contain them, as registered by an active member of this Associa- 

 tion, an instance of industry and critical judgment. I refer to 

 the well-known catalogue of scientific and technical periodicals, 

 of about five thousand numbers, in publication from 1665 to 1882, 

 together with the catalogue of chemical periodicals by the same 

 author.^ 



Allied to the much neededservice in bibliography, is the service 

 in compilation of the Cor?'ants of Nature. In the preface of his 

 dictionary of solubilities, in 1856, Prof. Storer said " that chem- 

 ical science itself might gain many advantages if all known facts 

 regarding solubility were gathered from their widely-scattered 

 original sources into one special comprehensive work." That 

 the time of the philosophical study of solution was near at hand 

 has been verified by recent extended monographs on this subject. 

 In like manner Thomas Carnelley in England, and early and 

 repeatedly our own Prof. Clarke in the United States,- bringing 

 multitudes of scattered results into co-ordination, have augmented 

 the powers of chemical service. 



What bibliography does for research, the Handworterbuch 

 does for education, and for technology. It makes science wieldy 

 to the student, the teacher, and the artisan. The chief diction- 

 aries of science, those of encyclopaedic scope, ought to be pro- 

 vided generally in public libraries, as well as in the libraries of 

 all high schools. 3 The science classes in preparatory schools 

 should make an acquaintance with scientific literature in this 

 form. If scholars be assigned exercises which compel reference 

 reading, they will gain a beginning of that accomplishment too 

 often neglected, even in college, how to use books. 



' "Bolton's Catalogue of Scientific and Technical Periodicals" (1885 : 

 Smithsonian) omits the serials of the Societies, as these are the subject of 

 Scudder's " Catalogue of Scientific Serials" (1879: Harvard Univ.). On 

 the contrary, Bolton's " Catalogue of Chemical Periodicals" (1885 : N. Y. 

 Acad. Sci.) includes the publications of Societies as well as other serials, 

 Chemical technology is also represented in the last-named work. 



^ The service of compilation of this character is again indicated by this 

 extract from Clarke's introduction to the first edition of his " Constants" 

 (1873): "While engaged upon the study of some interesting points in theo- 

 retical chemistry, the compiler of the following tables had occasion to make 

 frequent reference to the then existing lists of specific gravities. None of 

 these, however, were complete enough. ..." 



3 The statistics of school libraries in the United States are very meagre, 

 the expenditures for them being included with that_ for apparatus. For 

 libraries and apparatus of all common schools, both primary and secondary, 

 the annual expenditure is set at 987,048 doUars, which is about seven-tenths 

 of one per cent, of the total expenditure for these schools. 



NO. 119 1, VOL. 46] 



