586 REPORT— 1901. 



Original Communications in the Transactions of the Chemical Society, 



The information furnished by these figures is also presented in a graphic form 

 by means of the lower curve in the diagram facing p. iJ93. 



The activity displayed in chemical research, as measured by the number of 

 original communications to the Chemical Society, is, however, best followed by a 

 consideration of the aggregate number of papers contributed during the three 

 following decades : — 



Decade 

 1855-1864 

 1865-1874 

 1875-1884 

 1885-1894 



Total Number of Papers in 

 ' Transactions of Cliemical Society ' 

 352 

 422 

 641 

 847 



From these figures it is manifest, even without the application of any of those 

 mathematical processes in which modern chemists are becoming so expert, that 

 the most remarkable increase in the number of original investigations is indeed 

 coincident with that decade, 1875-1884, in which the great majority of the 

 institutions to which I have referred began to throw their prismatic rays of 

 knowledge on many thousands who until then were sitting in shadow or even in 

 darkness. 



That these new institutions should have so immediately borne fruit in the 

 manner I have Indicated cannot fail to te surprising to those who have been 

 associated with the early years of almost any of these colleges, for when a faithful 

 record of the experiences of their first professors is written the extraordinary 

 obstacles which these pioneers had to encounter, and which in so many cases they 

 successfully overcame, should ailbrd material for a most remarkable, instructive, 

 and even amusing volume. The worthy founders and their executors or trustee^ 

 appear in general to have supposed that it was only necessary to provide a 

 spacious building, and then appoint a stafi" of professors who were to do the rest, 

 whilst the necessity of funds for annual upkeep, for libraries, and for assistants 

 was almost overlooked. 



It has indeed been learnt by bitter experience that the cost of efficiently 

 maintaining institutions of this most ambitious character is enormously greater 

 than was supposed in this country twenty-five years ago, and that founding a 

 college, far from resembling the inauguration of a remunerative business, is very 

 like entrance into the bond of matrimony, with its attendant annually increasing 

 demand upon the pecuniary resoiu-ces of the paterfamilias. 



It would not indeed be surprising if some of these modern colleges had been 

 long debarred from contributing directly to the progress of scientific investigation 

 in this country, for this was often assuredly considered amongst the least of the 

 many arduous duties imposed upon their first professors. Ascertained capacity to 

 enrich science was in some cases almost a presumptive disqualification for tbeJr 



