28 REPORT — 1867. 



ings, even thoiigli founded on supposed empirical data. The Scientific Committee 

 of the Royal Society had declined to continue these "warnings, on the ground tliat 

 Admiral FitzRoy had obtained his conclusions on empirical data. The author stated 

 that the Committee proposed to establish eight additional observatories througlmut 

 the empire ; and at the end of fifteen years they expected to be able to predict 

 storms on philosophical data, and not on empirical data. But if during the last 

 fifty years all the Observatories of the kingdom had not been able to obtain these 

 results, the author thought that they were not likely to do so during the next fif- 

 teen years, and the cost of ma'ntaining them would be wasted. 



On Evaporation from Rain-gauges. By JonN Thetjston. 



CHEMISTRY. 



Address hij tlie President, Thomas Anderson, M.D., F.R.S.E. 



On many previous occasions the British Association has met in places which have 

 aflbrded the chemist valuable opportunities of seeing the principles of his science 

 reduced to practice, and the various papers which have been read at this Section on 

 these subjects, and the discussions which have arisen regarding them, have formed 

 a very interesting department of its proceedings. At the present Meeting little of 

 this is likely to engage our attention ; for though the manufactures of Dundee have 

 probably increased, during the last ten or fifteen years, in a more rapid ratio than 

 those of any other town in the kingdom, they have taken a direction which gives 

 but little scope for the applications of chemistry, so that -n-ith the exception of a 

 few of the simpler operations of the dyer, there is really scarcely anything which 

 need specially attract our attention. Under these circumstances it may be fairly 

 anticipated that the business of the Section will be more particularly occupied with 

 the discussion of the great principles of the science which to the general public 

 are often less interesting, and regarded as the exclusive province of those engaged 

 in scientific study, and not sufficiently recognized as being tlie only sure foundation 

 on which the superstructure of practical progress can be raised. 



The consideration of these general principles is, liowever, at the present moment 

 a matter of the very highest importance, for the science of chemistry is in a state 

 of transition. The immense accumulation of facts which has been made during 

 the last twenty or thirty years, has not only increased her bounds, but lias shown 

 the insufficiency of those principles on which the chemist was formerly ready to 

 rely -nath almost implicit confidence, and introduced changes amounting to a revo- 

 lution, which have had the eftect of unsettling the views formerly entertained, 

 without as yet introducing anything which can be considered satisfactory in their 

 place. The atomic theory, which at the commencement of the present century 

 explained with clearness and precision all the facts of the science then known, has 

 proved itself (at least in the form in which Dalton left it) no longer sufficient for 

 the purpose. At the time at which it was produced, the knowledge of chemists 

 was confined to a comparatively small number of compounds, among which those 

 of oxygen had so preponderating an importance that the science of the time might 

 almost be described as the chemistry of oxygen. At the present moment, if we 

 were to attach to it the name of any individual element, we should probably 

 describe the whole science by the definition which has been so often applied to 

 organic chemistry, and call it the chemistrj' of carbon, for it is in the study of the 

 compounds of that element that all the difficulties witli which the chemist has 

 now to contend have had their origin. At a comparatively early period indeed, 

 doubts were expressed as to the sufficiency of the atomic theory of Dalton, and 

 Ampere especially suggested that the chemical atom might with advantage be 

 considered to be a congeries of smaller particles ; but this and other analogous 

 additions to tlie original conceptions of the chemical atom, being of a purely specn- 

 lative character, and having no immediate bearing on the facts then, or even now 

 known, have never been accepted by chemists, or received fi'om them more than a 



