GERMAN SCIENCE , 107 
It is difficult to name any industry on which chemistry has 
not some bearing. The use of fuel, the choice of materials for 
construction, whether in metal or earthenware, the selection 
and purification of water for steam-raising and all its other 
manifold uses, the extraction and refining of metals, the 
making of alloys, the manufacture, indeed, of every material 
thing—these are all matters on which chemistry has some- 
thing to say, because chemistry is the science which enables 
a man to deal intelligently and accurately and economically 
with all questions that bear on the composition of things. 
There is, I believe, hardly a manufacturing concern of any 
size in which a chemist, properly trained and properly used, 
would not be worth a great deal more than his salary. It is 
equally true that there are just as many in which an ill-trained 
or misused chemist will be an unprofitable servant. But there 
are some industries which are in a peculiar degree chemical, 
and in these Germany has shown herself supreme. 
Of all the material results of German science, the one best 
known to the English public is the establishment of what is 
called the Coal-tar industry. Let us glance at that wonderful 
development. 
The first of the colouring matters now generally known as 
the aniline dyes was discovered in 1856 by our countryman, the 
late Sir W. H. Perkin. I need, perhaps, hardly remark that 
these coal-tar colours or aniline dyes do not occur ready- 
made in coal-tar, any more than chairs and tables are found 
in trees. Coal-tar supplies the raw materials from which, by 
suitable manipulation, the dye-stuffs are elaborated. When 
Perkin, at the age of eighteen, discovered mauve he was 
acting as assistant to Professor Hofmann, that pupil of Liebig 
to whom I have already alluded as having been the first 
professor in a real professional chemical laboratory in England. 
The aim of the researches in which Perkin was engaged was 
purely scientific. He had no intention of turning his chemistry 
