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 



