November 24, 1898] 



NATURE 



85 



together, we shall perhaps have done as much in opening up as 

 in solving problems ; and that we shall certainly leave plenty 

 for our successors to do. In conclusion, considering that there 

 still remain five of your honoured guests to speak, this is all I 

 will say of my own career, and I will only now ask you, Mr. 

 President, the Council, and the Fellows of the Chemical 

 Society, to believe that I esteem very highly the great honour 

 you have conferred upon me to-night." 



Sir Edward Frankland — " Allow me to thank you, Mr. Pre- 

 sident, and the Council of the Chemical Society for this delightful 

 entertainment which you have prepared for the Past-Presidents 

 who have attained Jubilee rank. It was a generous, unique, 

 and happy idea, which I feel sure we all heartily appreciate, not 

 only as we sit at your hospitable bo.ird, but also when we reflect 

 on the kind feelings which led to the conception of that idea. 

 There used to be a phrenological organ entitled ' love of appro- 

 bation,' and whether there is or is not a part of the brain told 

 off to perform this function, I trust that chemists are not be- 

 hind the rest of humanity in appreciating such an honour as you 

 have conferred upon us on this auspicious occasion. Nothing 

 could be more agreeable than thus meeting so many colleagues 

 who are worthily keeping up the high reputation of the Chemical 

 Society. There is but one drawback to our enjoyment, and it 

 has been very feelingly alluded to by Sir Henry Gilbert, namely, 

 that one who so recently stood at the head of our Past- Presidents 

 should not still be present amongst us. In the lamented 

 ■death of Lord Playfair, chemistry and science generally have 

 sustained an immeasurable loss ; for he was a binding link 

 between science and the State, always ready to fight for the 

 cause of truth against prejudice and ignorance, and never ceasing 

 in his efforts to bring home to our rulers the vast importance 

 of the applications of science to the progress, health and pros- 

 perity ot the nation. As one of his first pupils, and after a 

 life-long friendship, I may be permitted to testify that his energy 

 in this cause was prompted by sincere convictions and not by 

 political exigencies. Had Playfair lived a few months longer, 

 we should never have had the misfortune to make the acquaint- 

 ance of that new variety of Homo sapiens the 'conscientious 

 objector,' who is just now giving so much trouble to our 

 magistrates. This is not a time to sketch, even in merest out- 

 line, the epoch-making work of the Society, but I may at least 

 state my conviction that it will be found, on comparing the 

 volumes of our Transactions with those of the corresponding 

 societies of other lands, that, considering the number of 

 workers in each case, England is not behind any other nation 

 , in research work, and this in spite of the almost total 

 absence of that lavish State aid which nearly every other civilised 

 nation enjoys. In view of the vast number of discoveries pouring 

 out from chemical laboratories, I hear it suggested that the 

 day is not far distant when there will be nothing left to 

 discover, when all the elements in the cosmos shall have been 

 captured and fitted into the periodic system of Newlands and 

 Mendeleeff, when there is not one more gas in the atmosphere 

 left to be detected, and every element and group of elements 

 shall have its ortho-, para-, and meta-position assigned to it. 

 What will then remain to be done? Fortunately for investigators, 

 we shall still be only as children gathering pebbles on the shore 

 of the great ocean of knowledge. As yet we have only found 

 the big boulders. To change the metaphor, chemistry now 

 occupies the position of geography a century ago. The enormous 

 number of chemical compounds are like so many islands, their 

 latitude and longitude ascertained with precision, but on which 

 the foot of man has not been put down, whilst their animals, 

 plants, and minerals have never been exploited. When the 

 ideal state of knowledge has been attained, chemists will 

 perhaps find time to explore this vast archipelago, in which, 

 there is no doubt, many interesting discoveries await those who 

 shall undertake the task. Who can set a limit to the 

 usefulness of these explorations ? Even the most un- 

 promising compounds may turn out valuable prizes ! 

 When aniline, chloroform, and carbolic acid were dis- 

 covered, who could have predicted the revolutions in the arts 

 and surgery which these bodies were destined to produce ! They 

 were but as desert islands until they attracted the attention of 

 Hofmann, Perkin, James Simpson, and Lister. As chemists, I 

 believe we have a noble future before us. Chemistry is distin- 

 guished from all other branches of knowledge as the helpmate 

 of nearly every other science. The geologist, the botanist, and 

 the physiologist find no thoroughfare unless they call in the 

 help of the chemist. As soon as the physicist breaks into a 



NO. 15 17, VOL. 59] 



molecule, he is trespassing on our domain. The bacteriologist 

 has found that it is not the waggling of the tail of a pathogenic 

 microbe that is the most important feature of its history, but 

 that the chemical compounds which it secretes demand his 

 closest attention. Even the astronomer has already to sit at 

 the feet of the chemist ! Thirty-three years ago, when our 

 worthy President was but a youth, there was once a dinner 

 party composed chiefly of chemists held at the ' .\lbion.' A few 

 are still living — among them being Sir F. Abel, Prof. Odling, 

 and mysel.''. In an after-dinner speech on that occasion, my 

 friend Abel is reported to have expressed himself in blank verse 

 as follows (I hope he will forgive me, at this distance of time, 

 for appropriating his words to my own use) : 



" ' Looking to right and to left, I see many faces around me, 

 Faces so old .and familiar I feel once again at the College, 

 Testing, as in former times, for chlorine with nitrate of silver, 

 Gazing with youthful delight at crystals just hatched in a beaker, 

 Yearning o'er aniline drops distilling from crystal alembic. 

 O I my dear friends, one and all, we hav€ toiled up a difilicult pathway ! 

 Some are low down on the hill, and others are near to the summit. 

 Let us remember the past and forget not our absent companions ; 

 Fortune may come to us all ; but youth will return to us never ! ' " 



Prof. Odling : — "I do not know that I can better commence 

 the few observations I propose to make to you than by following 

 in the wake of my predecessor, Sir Edward Frankland, and 

 saying that it is no less a great pleasure than my bounden duty 

 to express to you, Mr. President, and to the Council and Fellows 

 of the Society, my heartfelt thanks for the great compliment that 

 you have paid to my colleagues and myself on this long-to-be- 

 remembered occasion. Speaking, however, for myself person- 

 ally, it is not the first time that I have had evidenced to me the 

 kindly feeling of the Chemical Society. On the occasion of my 

 retirement from the Secretaryship in 1869, I had also the special 

 honour done me of being entertained at a dinner by the Society ; 

 and I also received a further token of their goodwill in the form 

 of a capacious loving cup of no inconsiderable value in itself, 

 but of far greater value as a perpetual mark of the kind 

 leeling towards me of those with whom I had been for so 

 many years so intimately connected. Those of us whom 

 you entertain this evening have for a long period of time, 

 as Sir Henry Gilbert and Sir Edward Frankland have 

 already remarked, been associated with one another in 

 common pursuits and enjoyments ; and if there is one 

 thing more than another that enhances to me the gratification of 

 this meeting, it is the pleasure of finding myself associated still 

 with my old friends and colleagues, Gilbert and Frankland and 

 Williamson and Gladstone, and my earliest friend of all. Sir 

 Frederick Abel. We have been concerned with one another in 

 a large number of undertakings, and for a long period of time 

 have been accustomed to hear one another's voices as well upon 

 festive as upon scientific occasions. Btit we have not been 

 accustomed to hear them in exactly the order they have been 

 arranged for this evening. I have always looked upon myself, 

 not as a precursor, but as a follower of Williamson. It has 

 been my pride to reckon myself one of his adopted pupils — a 

 disciple of his ideas more perhaps than many of those who 

 were his actual pupils. He was always very decided in his 

 notions. Sometimes, indeed, I turned a little restive, but was 

 always soon pulled upintoform again — sometimes more abruptly, 

 perhaps, than was quite agreeable at the moment. At one 

 time I laboured under the sad suspicion of being a little unsound 

 as to the Atomic Theory. Well, perhaps I was not altogether 

 so stalwart in its defence as I ought to have been ; but I can 

 assure you that I was never really guilty of so reprehensible a 

 heresy as that which was attributed to me. 



" Vou are doing us honour here this evening not so much, or 

 not only, as students of the science of chemistry, but also as 

 Past- Presidents of the Chemical Society. As ancients of that 

 Society, we may all of us perhaps be permitted to talk a little 

 about ourselves without incurring the imputation of egoism, and 

 also to talk a little about old times without incurring the 

 reproach, after our fifty years' fellowship, of senile garrulity. 

 At the period during which I acted as one of the Secretaries of 

 the Society, and my colleague. Prof. Redwood, concerned him- 

 self mostly with the business department of our affairs, the 

 Chemical Society had not developed very far its function as a 

 publishing agency, and as a consequence, even for that little 

 prolific time, we did not get our fair share of important papers 

 contmunicated at first hand to our meetings. But if we did not 

 receive elaborate communications, we enjoyed the benefit of 

 elaborate discussions ; and there was no new class of compounds, 



