September 2, 1909] 



NATURE 



279 



finest wheat areas in the province, and of studying' 

 modern methods of garnering the harvest. The 

 botanical section visited Winnipeg Beach, while the 

 members of the engineering section inspected St. 

 Andrew's lock, now being built by the Dominion 

 Government in order to furnish uninterrupted navi- 

 gation, via Red River, between \\'innipeg and the 

 lake bearing the same name. In Winnipeg itself a 

 reception was given by Lord Strathcona at his former 

 residence at Silver Heights, and was attended by 

 about fifteen hundred people. 



The Times also reports that one of the tangible 

 results of the meeting of the Association in Canada 

 has been the purchase by Dr. Gray, the Warden of 

 Bradfield College, Berks, and president of the section 

 of educational science, of a ranch of 2000 acres near 

 •Calgar)'. A competent Canadian has been appointed 

 superintendent, and it is Dr. Gray's intention to afford 

 an opportunity to Bradfield boys, on the completion 

 of their school course, to acquire practical knowledge 

 of the farming and ranching conditions of .\Iberta. 



Dr. T. G. Bonney, F.R.S., will be president of the 

 Association for the meeting to be held at Sheffield 

 next year from .\ugust 31 to September 7. 



SECTION B. 



CHEMISTRY. 



OrENiNG Address {.\bridged) by Prof. H. E. .\r.\istroxg, 

 Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S., President of the Section. 



After an interval only a year short of a quarter of a 

 ■century, it is my privilege again to occupy the chair of 

 this section, and that, too, under conditions of special 

 significance. The British Association has never before 

 sought to carry the banner of science so far west into 

 British Dominions — never before was it so clear that the 

 progress of humanity is linked with the progress of science 

 by an indissoluble bond : science defined in a word being 

 knowledge , not mere work nor mere lip knowledge, but 

 systematised established knowledge, not assumed knowledge 

 — although hypothesis often serves to guide inquiry and 

 truth is arrived at only gradually and slowly by a series 

 of rough appro.ximations. Moreover, science is true know- 

 ledge of every kind — there is too often a tendency to give 

 a narrow interpretation of the word. One reason probably 

 why the term does not produce any proper effect upon the 

 average British ear is that it is not an English word but a 

 mere adaptation from the Latin — a language which appar- 

 ently cannot be engrafted upon our Saxon tissues, although, 

 perhaps, it may be that we have so little feeling for it 

 because we have been allowed to learn so little else in our 

 higher schools ; monotony of diet ever favours diminutive 

 growth. Germans, I always feel, enjoy a great advantage 

 over us in possessing the popular word i]'issetischaft — in 

 calling science the business of knowing, the business of 

 gaining wisdom, of being wise. 



Naturally I am constrained on the present occasion to 

 take stock of the position of our science, to draw a com- 

 parison between the condition of affairs chemical when we 

 met in Aberdeen in 1885 and their present state. No like 

 period of human history has been more fruitful of advance ; 

 at the same time, no period illustrates more clearly the 

 difficulties that lie in the path of progress — because of the 

 innate conservatism proper to human nature. 



Before attempting to deal with any of the problems which 

 concerned us at Aberdeen, I will first briefly pass the more 

 salient features of advance in review. Few probablv are 

 aware how extraordinary is the command we now have of 

 our subject. In 1885, in defending the tendency of chemists 

 to devote themselves to the chemistrv of carbon, I could 

 speak of the great outcome of their labours as being the 

 establishment of the doctrine of structure. Everything that 

 has happened in the interval is in support of this contention. 

 It is interesting that in a recent lecture ' on the Physical 

 Aspect of the Atomic Theory, the most prominent living 

 exponent of physical theories has given a not unwelcome 



' The Wilde Lecture, 1008. By Prof. Larmor, .Sec.R.S., Manche5ter 

 Literary and Philosophical Society Memoirs. 



NO. 2079, VOL. 81] 



recognition of our right-mindedness in saying : " As time 

 goes on it becomes increasingly ditlicult to resist the direct 

 evidence for the simple view that, in many cases, chemical 

 combination is not so much a fusion or intermingling of the 

 combining atomic structures as rather an arrangement of 

 them alongside one another under steady cohesive affinity, 

 the properties of each being somewhat modified, though not 

 essentially, by the attachment of the others ; and that the 

 space formulje of chemistry have more than analogical 

 significance." And again in the following passage, in 

 which a far-reaching confession is made : " The aim of 

 structural chemistry must go much deeper (than dynamical 

 methods of treatment) ; and we have found it diflicult, on 

 the physical evidence, to gainsay the conclusion that the 

 molecular architecture represented by stereo-cheniical 

 formulas has a significance which passes beyond merely 

 analogical representation and that our dynamical views must 

 so far as possible be adapted to it." The remark made by 

 Helmholtz in one of his letters, " that organic chemistry 

 progresses steadily but in a manner which, from the 

 physical standpoint, appears not to be quite rational," must 

 be regarded as little more than a confession that he was 

 out of his depth. When properly understood, nothing could 

 be more rational and logical than the way in which our 

 theory of structure has been gradually built up on an 

 impregnable basis of fact, with the aid of the very simple 

 conceptions of valency postulated by Frankland and Kekul^. 

 Our security lies in the fact that the postulates of our 

 theory have been tested in an almost infinite variety of 

 cases and never found wanting ; this is not to say they are 

 applicable in all cases, but merely that whenever we are 

 in a position to apply them we can do so without hesita- 

 tion. Larmor refers to the habit of physicists of taking 

 comfort in Helmholtz 's remark; it will be well if instead 

 they make themselves acquainted with our niethods and 

 with the results we have won, with a minimum of specula- 

 tive effort, by the cultivation of an instinct or sense of 

 feeling which experience shows to be an effective guide to 

 action. Now that physical inquiry is largely chemical, now 

 that physicists are regular excursionists into our territory, 

 it is essential that our methods and our criteria should be 

 understood by them. I make this remark advisedly, as it 

 appears to me that of late years, while affecting almost to 

 dictate a policy to us, physicists have taken less and less 

 pains to make themselves acquainted with the subject- 

 matter of chemistry, and especially with our methods of 

 arriving at the root-conceptions of structure and of proper- 

 ties as conditioned by structure. It is a serious matter 

 that chemistry should be so neglected by physicists and 

 that the votaries of the two sciences should be brought so 

 little into communion. 



The central luminary of our system, let me insist, is the 

 element carbon. The constancy of this element, the firm- 

 ness of its affections and aflinities, distinguishes it from 

 all others. It is only when its attributes are understood 

 that it is possible to frame any proper picture of the pos- 

 sibilities which lie before us, of the place of our science in 

 the Cosmos. But, as Longfellow sings of the sea in his 

 poem, "The Secret of the Sea," " Only those who brave 

 its dangers comprehend its mystery " — only those who are 

 truly conversant with the root-conceptions of organic chem- 

 istry are in a position to attempt the interpretation of the 

 problems of our science as a whole or even to understand 

 the framework upon which it is built up. And yet we con- 

 tinue to withhold the knowledge of the properties of carbon 

 from students until a late period of their development ; 

 indeed, when I insisted recently that organic and inorganic 

 cheinistry should be taught as one subject to medical 

 students,' I was told that it could not be; that the attempt 

 had been made with disastrous consequences. I trust that 

 ere long the futility of such an attitude will be generally 

 realised. 



It is remarkable how much our conceptions are now 

 guided bv geometrical considerations. The development by 

 van 't Hoff of the Pasteur hypothesis of geometrical asym- 

 metry has been attended with far-reaching consequences 

 during the period under review, the completeness with 

 which the fundamental properties of the carbon atom are 

 symbolised by a regular tetrahedron being altogether 

 astounding. 



1 '• The Reform of the Medical Curriculum " (.S"(r/f«cj Progress, ]2.nu^Ty 

 and April, 1907). 



