




_ are essential for certain products. 
Marcu 4, 1915] 
NATURE 
Tel 

The latter consist of painters’, cabinet-makers’, 
joiners’, and metal-workers’ shops, all on the 
south of this wing. This concentration warrants 
the use of machinery, and almost every kind of 
wood-working tool, down to the oil-stone, has its 
individual electric motor. The ‘‘sweat of man’s 
brow” sounds archaic here, but none the less the 
artisans have a shower-bath and dressing-room. 
Each department has also its own laboratories, 
work-rooms, and “comfort-rooms. 
The abundant storage space is fitted with 
standardised shelves, drawers, and cases, permit- 
ting ready rearrangement and interchange. 
The auditorium is well designed, accessible, and 
isolated. There are also two rooms for committees 
and small scientific meetings. 
This book does not profess to describe the 
installation of the exhibits, though a few plates 
(see Fig. 2) show the general effect. 
lies in its account of structural detail and practical 
fitments; it should be read by every museum 
governor, and digested by every architect of future 
museum buildings. The claim advanced may not 
be substantiated at every point, but as regards 
those here mentioned it is enough to say that the 
United States Museum possesses what our own 
Natural History Museum notoriously lacks. 

ALCOHOL. FOR SCIENTIFIC 
PURPOSES: ; 
N the recent discussions on the best means of 
developing the colour industry in this country, 
reference has frequently been made to the duty 
charged upon pure methyl and ethyl alcohol, which 
Although the 
past and present stagnation is mainly due to other 
and much more deep-seated causes, the fact that 
the trade is still handicapped by a form of taxa- 
tion which does not exist in Continental coun- 
tries is one of the signs of the steady indifference 
of the Government to scientific industrial develop- 
ment of which Thomas Thomson so bitterly com- 
plained in his history of chemistry written nearly 
a century ago. 
As the result of a very widespread feeling of 
dissatisfaction with the high cost of these alcohols 
(a feeling which had long existed in all the im- 
portant centres of chemical research in this coun- 
try) the subject was brought before the chemical 
section of the British Association at the Glasgow 
meeting in rgor, and an influential committee was 
formed, which was successful in persuading the 
Board of Inland Revenue to forgo the duty on 
methyl and ethyl alcohol used for scientific pur- 
poses in approved institutions. Their recommen- 
dations were embodied in the Finance Act of 1902, 
the working of which has, we believe, given 
general satisfaction. Whether or not the labora- 
tories of manufacturing firms are permitted to 
share these advantages we cannot state. Yet in 
spite of the virtual, if tardy, concession of the 
principle that research can be usefully promoted 
in this way, one is constantly confronted with the 
sort of trivial annoyance such as Sir William 
Ramsay and Prof. Hickson have recently suffered 
NO. 2366, VOL. 95 | 
DUTY-FREE 
Its value - 
' ten shillings on each still, 
at the hands of the excise authorities (see NATURE, 
February 11 and 18), who imposed a duty on the 
spirit in which specime ns coming from abroad 
were preserved. ‘‘Red tape” seems almost too 
soft a material for binding the cast iron regula- 
tions which govern the Excise Department. If, 
however, the above principle is recognised and 
conceded, surely it might be adopted in a broad 
; and, if possible, scientific spirit on the part of the 
authorities. It is not only carried out in the 
narrowest spirit of officialdom, but also is applied 
with an extraordinary absence of logic, such as is 
only conceivable where ignorance of the elements 
of organic chemistry exists. 
For example, chloroform and ether made from 
ethyl alcohol pay duty, whereas that from methyl- 
ated spirit (methylated ether) in one case and 
acetone in the other do not, although the products 
are practically. identical. Again, methyl and 
ethyl alcohol used for research are exempt from 
duty, whereas ethyl acetate and butyrate, ethyl 
chloride, bromide, iodide, and chloral hydrate, 
in all of which ethyl alcohol is used, are not 
exempt. The corresponding methyl derivatives 
which are obtained in precisely the same way from 
methyl alcohol are not scheduled and, we pre- 
sume, are free to all consumers. It may be seen 
from the table of excise regulations that chemists 
keeping or using stills are subject to a tax of 
although it should be 
stated to the credit of the excise department that 
the payment is rarely if ever enforced in labora- 
tories so far as we know. Perhaps at some future 
date the regulation may be modified. We see in 
all this a tardy and grudging response to those 
pressing demands for liberty of research, which 
foreign Governments have so_ successfully en- 
couraged. 
But it is not the duty on alcohol which has been 
the main factor in crippling the colour industry 
during the last thirty years. Nor is it defective 
training, equipment, or ability of the young 
chemists turned out from our universities, whose 
scientific work stands second to none. It is that 
the manufacturing world is only beginning to 
realise at this time of crisis in the chemical indus- 
try the true value of the research chemist. We 
say “beginning to realise,” for it was only a few 
days ago that a professor of chemistry in one of 
our provincial universities received a request from 
a large and wealthy corporation to recommend a 
first-rate chemist, to whom the handsome salary 
of thirty shillings a week was offered, or about a 
third of the earnings of a coal-miner working full 
time ! 
It would take up too much space to attempt 
to trace the cause of that attitude of indifference 
among Berily all classes to the application of 
scientific research to industry which is such a 
striking feature of German commercial develop- 
ment. There can be no question that the key to 
the problem is to be found in our educational 
system. The very terms “humanities” and 
“stinks ” are fraught with deep significance. They 
would appear to contrast what is real and living 

