Supblement to ‘ Nature,” May 2, 1912. Vv 
research is given in the chapter devoted to the 
scientific aspects of bread-making. 
The value of these industrial fellowships to the 
college-trained chemist may well be gauged from 
the data furnished in the chapter on the relation 
between chemistry and manufacture in America. 
Here it will be seen that the conditions under which 
American manufacturers engage their chemists can 
scarcely be regarded as satisfactory to the latter. 
Of security of tenure there is virtually none, 
generally the chemist is “hired” by the week or 
month, except in a very few cases where contracts 
are made of one or two years’ duration. The 
average starting wage is about 720 dollars per 
annum, and in practically no instance investigated 
by the author is there any mechanism of promo- 
tion. The working day varies from seven to nine 
hours, and there is a very great diversity of prac- 
tice as regards vacations, which range from “ten 
days if we can spare him” to those more generous 
conditions where the chemists either have “seven 
weeks ” or “generally get what they demand.” 
It is evident from this not too attractive survey 
that the American graduate in science who wishes 
to take up industrial chemistry will probably gain 
more liberal terms vid an industrial fellowship than 
by private treaty with a manufacturing firm. 
The opening chapter of the book indicates some 
of the industrial prizes of chemistry, and, indeed, 
several of the problems are already being investi- 
gated under the industrial fellowship scheme at the 
Universities of Kansas and Pittsburgh. Most of 
these problems arise from the immediate and 
pressing needs of manufacturers and consumers, 
but although this chapter is not altogether lacking 
in the wider outlook, it is nevertheless somewhat 
disappointing to find that the author, although a 
professor of chemistry, feels compelled to ‘“con- 
sider frankly why trained and earnest men 
should devote laborious days to making diketo- 
tetrahydroquinazoline, or some equally academic 
substance.” It is always dangerously easy to 
follow a thoughtless fashion, and at present it is 
the vogue to regard organic chemistry as the 
Cinderella of the sciences. But true to her best 
traditions, this scientific drudge still possesses a 
fairy-godmother, and from time to time miraculous 
events occur in her dingy kitchen, with results 
which are of great benefit to humanity. Then the 
long names disappear, and such “academic sub- 
stances” as phenyldimethylpyrazolone and di- 
aminodihydroxyarsenobenzene become respectively 
antipyrine and salvarsan. 
tion is reached, those who formerly scorned the 
kitchen-maid have nothing but extravagant com- 
pliments for the fairy princess until her short 
NO, 2218, voL. 89] 
When this transforma- | 
| period of glamour is over and her adventitious 
charms are again forgotten. 
In fairness to the author, it should be stated that 
his disparagement of the work of the mere organic 
chemist is qualified very considerably in his discus- 
sion of the ideal training for an industrial chemist, 
from which the following extract is taken :— 
“Tt is for this reason that I attach so much 
importance to the discipline and methods of or- 
ganic chemistry, for organic chemistry is almost 
the sole subject in the chemical curriculum in 
which a student gains educational training in 
synthetic working and synthetic thinking.” In 
this passage the author supplies the answer to his 
earlier query, for is it not just conceivable that 
those “trained and earnest men” who set their 
pupils to “make diketotetrahydroquinazoline, or 
some equally academic substance,” do so because 
this exercise affords “an educational training in 
synthetic working and synthetic thinking ” ? 
The author’s mental attitude towards problems 
which are not of immediate industrial importance 
is seen in clearer perspective in the chapters deal- 
ing with the question of the atom, the chemical 
interpretation of life and the beginnings of things. 
In these sections a popular explanation is given 
of such widely diverse matters as the ultramicro- 
scope, Rutherford’s apparatus for studying the 
a-particle, the electrical theory of the atom, 
catalysts, enzymes, the planetesimal hypothesis, 
and the origin of terrestrial life. The “whither- 
ward of matter” deals in a similar manner with 
the phenomena of radioactivity and the transmuta- 
tions of the elements. 
The report on the relation of the Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin to the State is concerned 
only to a limited extent with purely chemical 
problems, but it constitutes a striking testi- 
mony of the way in which the American uni- 
versities are entering more and more into the 
everyday life of the people, so that practically 
every field of human activity is permeated and 
inspired by the university atmosphere. 
Gayla Me 
AND THEIR INSECT GUESTS. 
Ihre Anpassungen anein- 
ander und ihre gegenseitige Abhangigkeit. 
By Prof. O. von Kirchner. Pp. v+436. 
(Leipzig & Berlin: B. G. Teubner, rgrt.) 
Price 6.60 marks. 
FLOWERS 
Blumen und Insekten. 
INCE the well-known classical work of Her- 
mann Miiller on the ‘“Cross-Fertilisation of 
Flowers by Insects” (Eng. trans. 1883) has been 
extended by Knuth (1898) to an encyclopedic 
