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Section B.— CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 



President op the Section — Sir Lowthian Bell, Bart, D.C.L., F.R.S., F.C.S 



M.Inst.C.E. 



TUURSDAT, SEPTEMBER 12. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



It has occasionally been the practice of former occupants of this chair to devote 

 a considerable portion of the presidential address to the more recent discoveries in 

 chemical science. This branch of learning advances now with such rapid strides 

 Mid covers so wide a held, that no one who has not made it the business of his 

 life can hope to discharge this duty with even a moderate share of success. 



My immediate predecessor, indeed, discourajred any further attempts in this 

 direction on the ground of the impossibility of doing it justice within the limits of 

 a short discourse, and his remarks were consequently directed to the best methods of 

 teaching the science witli which Section B is more directly concerned. I propose this 

 morning to add my testimony to the importance of Dr. Tilden's recommendation, 

 by comparing the rate of progress of one of our great national industries as it has 

 been advanced with and without the aid which chemistry is capable of affording. 

 For this purpose I have selected the metallurgy of iron, not only from my greater 

 familiarity with its details, but because, in my judgment, it affords a suitable example 

 for the object I have in -view. 



It is needless to insist on the disadvantage attending the application of a science 

 to practical work, without a fair knowledge of the principles which regulate its 

 action. At the same time it would be unfair to those who were engaged in the 

 manufacture of iron during the first half of the present century to deny the value 

 of the services which they rendered to their art, without giving much thought to 

 the laws of nature upon which their processes depended. The work so performed 

 suflBced, nevertheless, to place the world in possession of the metal in such abund- 

 ance and at so low a cost that no engineering works were delayed on account of the 

 high price or absence of the required quality in the produce of our ironworJis 

 during the period in question. On the other hand it is not to be denied that since 

 the iron-masters have allied themselves with the chemist they have made more 

 progress in thirty years than their predecessors did in three centuries. 



No one unacquainted with the archaeology of the iron trade could suppose that 

 the colossal furnaces now pouring forth their streams of molten metal, followed by 

 the rapid action of the Bessemer Converter, were the modern representatives of the 

 iron-making appliances of former days. Out of these last, in a low hearth not 

 larger than a domestic fireplace, often dependent on the wind for their blast, a few 

 pounds of ore were at a considerable cost for labour, fuel, and waste of metal, 

 converted into malleable iron. By means of a modern furnace, in an hour and a 

 half a ten-ton converter can be filled with liquid cast iron, which in twenty 

 minutes may be run into ingots cheaper, stronger, and more malleable than the 

 best wrought iron of our ancestors, or indeed of our own manufncture. 



■ How out of the small fire of the ancient ironworks the German Stiick-Ofen 

 was evolved is a matter of conjecture. In both, owing to the conditions under 



