510 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. 



Section B.— CHEMISTRY. 



Prksidext of tiiu Section — ■Professor Wyndiiam Dunstan, 

 M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 2. 

 The President delivered the following address: — 



Some Imperial Aspects of Applied Chemistry. , 



The President of the Chemical Section of the British Association must always 

 have a large choice of subjects for his Address. He may attempt to review 

 the chemical progress of the year, or to give an account of researches in that 

 division of the science in which he is most interested. He may deal with the 

 ever-recurring problems of education ; or, again, he may draw attention to the 

 importance of our science in one or other of its many relations to National and 

 Imperial affairs. I have decided to adopt the last course, and to invite your 

 attention at York, where several tropical products furnish the basis of important 

 industries, to the intimate association of our science with the problems that await 

 solution in connection with the utilisation of the raw materials and economic 

 products of our Colonies, and especially those of our tropical Possessions. There 

 is a pi'essing need that the Imperial Government sliould recognise much more 

 fully than it has hitherto done, and at least as fully as foreign Governments are 

 already doing, the claims of scientific investigation to be regarded as the pioneer 

 instrument of this work, and as the essential fir.st step in the material and com- 

 mercial development of our Possessions. 



Although my remarks will bo chiefly directed to the importance of chemistry 

 in this connection, my plea will be more general. It is that the scientific method 

 of experimental research should be systematically applied in each division of the 

 sciences concerned. In the case of raw materials, however, whether vegetable 

 or mineral, their commercial value must depend chiefly, if not entirely, upon their 

 composition, and sooner or later the method of chemistry must therefore be applied. 



In determining the value of the mineral resources of a country other specialists 

 are also concerned, and the assistance of the geologist, the mineralogist, and 

 eventually of the metallurgist may be required. Similarly with vegetable and 

 agricultural products the services of the economic botanist and of the entomologist 

 will be needed. It will therefore be necessary for me in dealing with the subject 

 as a whole to touch upon several aspects in which other sciences are concerned, 

 and with which the science of chemistry must co-operate in attaining a practical 

 end--namely, the material development of the countries concerned. I need make 

 no apology for many allusions to scientific agriculture, for this subject is this year 

 attached to this Section, and indeed the science of chemistry is of fundamental 

 importance to agricultural practice both at home and in the tropics. 



In the first place I must ask you to allow me to say a few words as to the very 



