G8G REPORT— 1900. 



Lotlirolirs,' wWcli appeared in 1820. After tlie puWication of this work blowpipe 

 anal5^sis rapidly came into general use in England, France, and Germany, and the 

 scheme devised by Berzelius is essentially that employed at the present day. 



Indeed, the only notable additions to the methods of analysis in the dry way 

 Blnce the time of Berzelius are the development of tlame reactions, which Bunsen 

 worked out with such characteristic skill and ingenuity, and the introduction of the 

 spectroscope. 



The necessity for some process other than that of analysis in the dry way 

 seems, in the first instance, to have arisen in quite early times in connection with 

 the examination of drugs, not only on account of the necessity for discovering 

 their constituents, but also as a means of determining whether they were adul- 

 terated. In such cases analysis in the dry way was obviously unsuitable, and ex- 

 perience soon showed that the only way to arrive at the desired result was to 

 treat the substance under esaminatiou with aqueous solutions of definite sub- 

 stances, the first reagent apparently being a decoction of o-allnuts. which is 

 described by Pliny as being employed in detecting adulteration with green 

 vitriol. 



The pTOgi'ess made in connection with wet analysis was, however, exceedingly 

 slow, largely owing to the lack of reagents ; Init as these were gradually discovered 

 wet analysis rapidly developed, especially in the hands of Tachenius, Scheele, 

 Boyle, Ho tlman, Margraf, and Bergmann. Boyle (i626-lC'Jl) especially had an 

 extensive knowledge of reagents and their application ; and, indeed, it was Boyle 

 who first introduced the word ' analysis ' for those operations by which substances 

 may be recognised in the presence of one another. Boyle knew how to test for 

 silver with hydrochloric acid, for calcium salts with sulphuric acid, and for coptper 

 by the blue solution produced by ammonia. 



Margraf (1709-1782) introduced prussiate of potash for the detection of iron, and 

 Bergmann (1735-1784) not only introduced new reagents and new methods for 

 decomposing minerals and refractory substances, such as fusion with potash, diges- 

 tion with nitric acid or hydrochloric acid, but he also was the first to suggest 

 the application of tests in a systematic way, and, indeed, the metliod of analysis 

 which he developed is on much the same lines as that in use at the present dcay. 

 He paid special attention to the qualitative analysis of minerals, and gave careful 

 instructions for the analysis of gold, platinum, silver, lead, copper, zinc, and other 

 ores. The work of Sicheele (1742-1 7y6) had indirectly a great inlluence on quali- 

 tative analysis, as, although he did not give a general systematic method of 

 procedure in the analysis of substances of unknown composition, yet the methods 

 which he emjjloyed in the examination of new substances wore so original and 

 exact as to remain models of how qualitative analysis should be conducted. 



Great strides in analytical chemistry in the wet way were made through the work 

 of Berzelius, who, by the discovery of new methods, such as the decouiposition of 

 silicates by hydrofluoric acid and the introduction of new tests, greatly advanced 

 the art. lie paid special attention to perfecting the methods of analysis of mineral 

 waters, and these researches as well as his work on ores, and particularity his investi- 

 gation of platinum ores, stamp Berzelius as one of the great pioneers in qualitative 

 and quantitative analytical chemistr}^ 



By the labours of the great experimenters whom I have mentioned qualitative 

 analysis gradually acquired the familiar appearance of to-day, and many 

 books were written with the object of arranging the mass of information which 

 had accumulated, and of thus rendering it available for the student in his efforts to 

 investigate tho composition of new minerals and other substances. Among these 

 books maj' bo mentioned the * Handbuch der analytischen Chemie,' by 11. Kose, 

 and especially the well-known analytical text-books of Eresenius, which have had 

 an extraordinarily wide circulation and jiassed through many editions. 



The work of the great pioneers in analytical chemistry was work done often 

 under circumstances of great difficulty, as before the end of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury there were no public institutions of any sort in which a practical knowledge 

 of chemistry could be acquired. Lectures were, of course, given from very early 

 times, but it was not until the time of Guillaame Francois Kouelle (1703-1770), at 



