32 REPORT— 1868. 
ficiently testify to their opinion of the national value of chemistry in education. 
The eee at Ziirich cost £14,000, that of Bonn £18,450, the one now nearly 
completed in Leipzig will cost £12,120, whilst the estimates for the Berlin labora- 
fo with its 74 rooms, amount to no less than £47,715. 
uch being the comparatively discouraging circumstances under which chemistry 
is prosecuted in this country, it is not surprising that neither the number of inves- 
tigators, nor the amount of new facts added to our knowledge during a given time 
will bear a favourable comparison with the chemical activity of other and more 
favoured nations. In the year 1866, 1273 papers were published by 805 chemists, 
being at the average rate of 1°58 paper for each investigator. Of these, Germany 
contributed 445 authors and 777 papers, or 1°75 paper to each author; France 170 
authors and 245 papers, or 1:44 paper to each author; the United Kingdom 97 
authors and 127 papers, or 1°31 paper to each author; whilst other countries 
furnished 93 authors and 124 papers, or 1:33 paper to each author. Our case is 
even worse than it appears to be from these figures; for a considerable proportion 
of the papers contributed by the United Kingdom were the work of chemists 
born and educated in Germany, but resident in this country. Iam not aware 
how far a like ea as regards activity in research obtains in other sciences ; 
but if the United Kingdom takes a similar position in them, it is nothing less than 
a national disgrace that a country, which perhaps more than any other, owes its 
greatness to the discoveries of science, should do so little towards the extension 
of scientific research. 
Fortunately, however, this national apathy has not been shared by individual 
chemists, and the has not passed without several important additions to our 
knowledge. The Master of the Mint has continued his remarkable researches on 
the occlusion of gases by metals. The extraordinary property possessed by some 
of the metals, but especially by palladium, of absorbing large volumes of certain 
gases, is one of the most interesting of modern observations, and can scarcely fail 
to throw light upon that obscure class of phenomena, occupying the border land 
between the recognized domains of chemical and cohesive attraction. 
Many cosmical changes, such as the variation of animal and vegetable species, 
move too slowly for our study. On the other hand, the sequence of transformations 
in chemical phenomena has generally been deemed too rapid to permit of the 
observation of anything but the final result. Harcourt and Esson, however, have 
shown that this phase of chemical action can be studied with very interesting results; 
in the cases of the action of oxalic acid upon permanganic acid, and of hydriodic 
acid upon hydroxyl, they have arrived at the following important conclusions :— 
1. The rate at which a chemical change proceeds is constant under constant 
conditions, and independent of the time that has elapsed since the change com- 
menced. 
2. When any substance is undergoing a chemical change, of which no condition 
_ varies, excepting the diminution of the changing substance, the amount of change 
occurring at any moment is directly proportional to the quantity of the substance. 
3. When two or more substances act one upon another, the amount of action at 
any moment is directly proportional to the quantity of each of the substances. 
4. When the rate of any chemical change is affected by the presence of a sub- 
stance, which itself takes no part in the change, the acceleration or retardation 
produced is directly proportional to the quantity of the substance. 
5. The relation between the rate of a chemical change occurring in a solution 
and the temperature of the solution is such, that for every additional degree the 
number expressing the rate is to be multiplied by a constant quantity. 
In mineral chemistry, an active Member of this Section has done excellent service 
by the careful reinvestigation of the compounds of vanadium. Roscoe’s researches 
have led to the discovery that vanadium does not, as was previously believed, 
belong to the sulphur group of elements, but to the nitrogen group. The vanadic 
chloride, of anomalous vapour-density, is now shown to be a normal oxychloride. 
The isolation of vanadium will be looked forward to with much interest, since the 
atomic weight of this element assigns to it a position intermediate between phos- 
phorus and arsenic. 
Chemists had long regarded with regret the labour expended by meteorologists, 
