54 



NATURE 



[July 8, 1909 



trial chemistry? Are not such considerations as economy 

 of energy in its various forms, high yields, and the avoid- 

 ing, or, if unavoidable, the utilisation of bye-products the 

 fundamental principles which we try to instil into the 

 mind of the young chemist about to begin his career as a 

 manufacturer? The history of applied chemistry is teem- 

 ing with examples where the survival of the fittest means 

 neither more nor less than a victory of economy. 



We all know that that marvellous creation of human 

 ingenuity, the closed ring of industrial chemical processes 

 working in connection with Leblanc's method of pro- 

 ducing soda, is practically extinct on the Continent and 

 materially reduced in its importance in England. This 

 fate it had to suffer, because it was a wasteful process — 

 wasteful in its utilisation of material and wasteful in its 

 consumption of energy. The skill and resource exerted 

 in its invention and constant improvement will for ever 

 be gratefully remembered ; but they were unable to check 

 the progress of the Solvay process, which is more 

 economical in its use of energy, and of the electrolytic 

 methods for splitting up the alkaline chlorides, which pro- 

 duce no bye-products. 



The progress of industrial chemistry does not always 

 depend on the introduction of more perfect, but also more 

 complicated, machinery and plant into the factories. Of 

 course, every chemical process requires thorough working 

 out from a mechanical point of view, and many of the 

 most brilliant successes of our modern chemical industry 

 are mainly due to a clever adaptation of mechanical means 

 to a chemical end ; but, taken as a whole, the real 

 progress of the chemical industry does not so much consist 

 in the improvement of the apparatus as in the simplifica- 

 tion of the fundamental chemical reactions. More than 

 once a seemingly insignificant chemical alteration of an 

 industrial process has produced the same or a better effect 

 than the introduction of the most ingenious and costly 

 plant. 



That the great principle of economy is not only applic- 

 able to the material necessary for carrying out chemical 

 reactions, but pei-haps even more to the energy consumed 

 by them, is a distinctly modern idea. It is not so very 

 long since we have begun to have, if I may say so, 

 a conscience for fuel. Previous generations took it for 

 granted that industrial work consumed coal, and that 

 the necessary coal had to be provided and to be paid for. 

 We are now awake to the fact that the quantitv of fuel 

 required for an industrial process is very much dependent 

 on the way in which it is made to do its work. 



Of course, the calorimetric effect of any given fuel is 

 a constant, and it is also true that we can never utilise 

 more than a certain proportion of it ; but this proportion 

 may vary considerably. It was alarmingly small almost 

 through the whole of the nineteenth century, and we may 

 congratulate ourselves upon its present ascendent tendency. 

 A striking example of the transformation of our views 

 about fuel and its proper use is the history of the smoke 

 question. There was a time, both in England and on 

 the Continent, when smoke was considered a necessary 

 evil which had to be suffered. After a while smoke began 

 to be looked upon as a nuisance, and war was declared 

 against it by those who suffered from its disagreeable 

 properties ; but now we know that smoke is a waste, and 

 that nobody has better cause to wage war against it than 

 he who produces it. A smoking chimney does not only 

 carry visible unburned carbon into the atmosphere, but in 

 nine cases out of ten also invisible carbonic oxide and 

 methane, with all the latent energy they contain. Smoking 

 chimneys are thieves, and their misdeeds should not rise 

 unavenged to heaven. 



But even chimneys that are innocent of incomplete com- 

 bustion may be guilty of stealing energy if thev allow 

 the gases of combustion to escape into the atrriosphere 

 with a higher temperature than is necessary to activate 

 the draught. The lost energy of such gases may be 

 trapped and recovered by the regenerating and recuperating 

 apparatus now so largely used by many industries. Re- 

 generative gas-heating is not only a sure prevention of 

 smoke, but also the most powerful means of economising 

 heat, and therefore one of the greatest acquisitions of 

 modern industry. It is perhaps not saying too much that 

 the saving of national wealth effected by it mav amount 

 NO. 2071, VOL. 81] ' 



to a sum sufficient to pay the aggregate national debts 

 of all the civilised nations. Uncivilised nations are blessed 

 with neither national debts nor heat-regenerating appli- 

 ances. 



My last comparison between biology and applied chem- 

 istry I should like to choose from a chapter which one 

 might call biological sociology, though 1 am not aware 

 that that name is commonly given to it. It treats of the 

 wonderful phenomena of symbiosc and aggregation. 



Symbiosis is, as we now know, of very frequent occur- 

 rence. Plants or animals of totally different nature and 

 organisation, or even plants and animals, may combine 

 for joint life and activity with the object of helping and 

 protecting each other in the great struggle for existence. 

 What neither of them would be able to fulfil or obtain 

 by its own strength and power they can do with ease 

 and certainty in their faithful allegiance. Gregarious- 

 ness — the flocking together of organisms of the same kind 

 — arises from the same spirit of mutual help and protec- 

 tion. 



There is a great deal in human life and institutions, in 

 our morals, politics, and science, which reminds us that 

 the human race, as an intrinsic part of animated nature, 

 has also inherited its all-pervading tendency for combining 

 forces ; and what is thus apparent in the doings of man- 

 kind in general cannot be absent in the special field of 

 activity which forms the object of our exertions. The 

 various forms of chemical industry are essentially 

 svmbiotic. They depend upon each other for their success 

 and progress. -A solitary chemical factory in a country 

 otherwise devoid of chemical industry is a practical 

 impossibility. Chemical works come in shoals if they 

 come at all. The maker of acids and alkalis wants other 

 chemical enterprises to use his products, and these, again, 

 are constantly on the look-out for customers. The more 

 varied and numerous the factories are, the rnore they 

 prosper, in spite of their complaints of growing com- 

 petition. 



The chemists themselves are gregarious. They form 

 societies and academies and institutes and syndicates by 

 the score, and who can deny the fact that brilliant results 

 have been achieved by such combinations of forces? 

 If we remember, in terms of unmeasured gratitude, the 

 great originators of our science and its applications, we 

 cannot forget the help rendered to its progress by such 

 institutions" as the Royal Society and Royal Institution, 

 the French, Italian, and German academies, the leading 

 chemical societies, and the innumerable universities in all 

 parts of the world, the rapid growth and extension of 

 which is the true gauge of our progress. 



Last, but I hope not least, in this list of brilliant aggre- 

 gations stand our congresses as a new, but most successful, 

 creation. They represent a modern form of symbiotic 

 effort amongst chemists, which is the more remarkable 

 because it is international. They proclaim the great truth 

 that science knows no boundaries and frontiers, that it is 

 the joint property of all humanity, and that its adherents 

 are ready to flock together from all parts of the w^orld 

 for mutual help and progress. It is the great truth pro- 

 claimed by one of our past presidents, Marcellin Berthe- 

 lot — " La science est la bienfaitrice de I'humanit^ enti^re " 

 — which our congresses might write on their banner, for 

 it expresses the spirit which led to their foundation and 

 ensures their success. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Dr. H. Koeold. professor of astronomy at the Kiel 

 University, has been called to the similar post at Berlin. 



Mr. J. E. Barnard has been appointed lecturer on 

 microscopy in the department of general pathology and 

 bacteriology. King's College, London. 



Dr. G. S. West has been appointed to the chair of 

 botanv and vegetable physiology in the University of 

 Birmingham, rendered vacant by the retirement of Prof. 

 Hillhouse. 



Prof. W. W. Payne has retired from the chair of 

 astronomv at Goodsell Observatory, which he founded at 



