688 REPORT— 1901. 



perferTid energy wliieli doubtless hastened his untimely end, soon found oppor- 

 tunity to interrogate Nature in various directions, notwithstanding the arduous 

 teaching duties which his inaatiahle love of work had imposed upon himself. Thus, 

 already in 1884, we find him, in his quest for material which should throw light 

 on the periodic relationship of the elements, continuing his laljorious work on 

 melting-points and publishing those two ponderous quarto volumes in which every 

 known melting-point was recorded, and forming truly one of the most remui'kable 

 compilations ever attempted in our science. Of these volumes he might indeed 

 have said, ' Exegi monumentum fere perennius,' for they will assuredly prove a 

 record of the boundless energy which characterised the man, more imperishable 

 even than the memorial tablet erected by bis admiring students and friends in 

 the entrance hall of the Dundee laboratory, which he built and loved so well. 



Yet another chemist, whose untimely death we have had to lament during the 

 past twenty years, laboured with marked zeal in one of these new colleges, for it 

 was at Aberystwith that Humpidge, regardless of his delicate health and in spite 

 of the altogether unreasonable burden of teaching duties imposed upon him by the 

 terms of his appointment, contributed to our knowledge of the atomic weight of 

 beryllium, and participated in establishing the position occupied by that metal in 

 the natural classification of the elements. 



Time does not permit me to further dilate upon the great activity displayed by 

 many of the first occupants of the chairs of chemistry in these provincial University 

 Colleges. It is also unnecessary for me to do more than remind you of the work 

 accomplished by the two Colleges of the City and Guilds of London, the chemical 

 laboratories of which have from their very inception been under the stimulating 

 influences of Dr. Armstrong and Professor Meldola, foci of research from which 

 a number of young chemists of distinction have already emanated. 



In recent years we have witnessed the genesis of another class of institution, 

 less ambitious in their aspirations than the University Colleges, but indirectly also 

 of much importance in their bearing upon the nurture of scientific chemistry in 

 this country. I refer to the so-called Polytechnics which have sprung up in several 

 parts of the Metropolis, and to some other institutions of similar scope in diflferent 

 parts of the country. If research in the University Colleges has been the product 

 of their professors rather than of the environment which they afford, assuredly 

 this is even far more so in the case of these Polytechnics, which are primarily 

 evening schools for the benefit of those who have other occupations during the 

 day. That the young lecturers on chemistry at these places should find time and 

 opportunity for original research, and that sometimes of a very high order, is 

 indeed a brilliant testimonial to their indomitable energy and resourcefulness. 

 Overburdened with large classes until late hours at night, often in those remote 

 and hideous parts of London which suggest to most of us only Slumland and the 

 philanthropic efforts of Toynbee Hall or of Dr. Barnardo, these young chemists 

 awake in the morning only to return as rapidly as possible to those laboratories 

 which exercise on them a fascination as subtle and magnetic as that which draws 

 the commonplace Englishman to the golf-links, the cricket-field, or tbe racecourse. 

 It was in the laboratory of such a technical school, the Ileriot Watt College, at 

 Edinburgh, that my distinguished predecessor in this chair, my friend Professor 

 Perkin, created his opportunities for devising and carrying out those now classical 

 methods of building up carbon rings which are the admiration of all organic 

 chemists throughout the world ; methods which he has recently brought to such 

 a pitch of perfection that he is not only able to forge these rings in great variety, 

 but to ' bridge ' them with links of carbon atoms. It was at the Heriot Watt 

 College also that his work on berberin was performed, and it was here that he 

 contracted that fertile alliance with Dr. Kipping, his able coadjutor in so many 

 valuable investigations. 



At the London Polytechnics, again, more recently, we have had similar 

 examples of fertility, for are we not all familiar with the masterly work of Mr. 

 W.J. Pope, who by his investigations at the Goldsmiths' Institute has extended 

 our knowledge of asymmetric atoms, and has shown that optical activity, which 

 hitherto had only bpep associatjjd with cafbon, apd somewhat doubtfully with 



