44 repokt — 1877. 



The iron-and-steel industry presents a great contrast to that of the artificial 

 colours in regard to the extent of influence which the labours of purely scientific 

 investigators have exerted upon its development. The efforts of scientific men to 

 unravel such problems as, for instance, the true chemical constitution of steel, or 

 the precise differences between the various combinations known as cast iron, and 

 the conditions which determine their individual production or conversion from 

 one to another, have hitherto been attended by results not at all proportionate to 

 the patient experimental investigation of which from time to time they have been 

 made the subject. Thus the protracted experiments and discussion carried on by 

 Frenvy and Oaron, some years back, with reference to the dependence of the 

 characteristics of steel upon the existence in it of nitrogen, cannot be said to have 

 led to results of a more conclusive or even definite nature regarding the conditions 

 which regulate the production, composition, and properties of steel than those 

 arrived at by previous distinguished experimenters ; and the same must be said, 

 with respect to cast iron, of such experiments as those carried on for several years 

 by Matthiessen (in which I also took some part) under the auspices of the Associa- 

 tion, with the view to eliminate many existing points of doubt regarding the 

 chemical constitution of cast iron, by preparing chemically pure iron and studying 

 its combination with carbon and other elements occurring in cast iron. 



The prosecution of purely scientific investigation may therefore of itself fail to 

 bear direct fruit in regard to the development of new metallurgic achievements, or 

 even to the elucidation of the comparatively complicated and numerous reactions 

 which occur in furnaces, either simultaneously or in rapid and difficultly controllable 

 succession, between materials composed of a variety of constituents in variable 

 proportions. There can, however, be no question regarding the important benefits 

 which have accrued from the application of chemical knowledge to the study and 

 the perfection of furnace-operations by those who happily combine that knowledge 

 with practical experience and with the power of putting to the test of actual prac- 

 tice the results of reasoning upon an intelligent observation of the phenomena 

 exhibited in such operatious, and upon the data which chemical analysis has 

 furnished. In the hands of such men, the scientific results arrived at by Karsten, 

 Berthier, Bunsen, Scheerer, Percy, and other eminent investigators acquire new 

 value, and by them the fruits of the labours of the patient toiler at analytical pro- 

 cesses meets with that appreciation which their solid and permanently valuable 

 work does not always command at the hands of their numerous brother-workers 

 in chemical science who follow the far more attractive paths of organic research. 



Naturally, the brilliant results achieved from time to time by investigators in 

 organic chemistry, the rapidity with which, by those results, theories are esta- 

 blished or extended, types founded, their offspring multiplied, and their connexion 

 with other families traced and developed, impart to organic research a charm 

 peculiarly its own. This, and the general ease with which new results are obtained 

 by the pursuit of methods of research comparatively simple in their nature and few 

 in kind, have for many years not only secured to organic chemistry an overwhelming 

 majority of workers ; they also appear to have had a tendency to lead the younger 

 labourers in the field of organic research to underestimate the value and importance, 

 in reference tothe advancement of science, of the labours of the plodding investi- 

 gator of analysis. Yet no higher example can be furnished of the patient pursuit 

 of scientific work, purely for its own sake, than that of the deviser or improver of 

 analytical processes, who, undeterred by failure upon failure, indefatigably pursues 

 bis laborious work, probing to its foundation each possible source of error, care- 

 fully comparing the results he obtains with those furnished by other methods of 

 analysis, and patiently accumulating experimental data till they suffice fully to 

 establish the value and trustworthiness of the process which he then publishes for 

 the benefitof his fellow-workers in science. Truly the results of such labours do 

 not stand in unfavourable contrast, from whatever light they may be viewed, to 

 those of the investigator of organic chemistry. It is not to be denied that the 

 labourer at organic research may, so far as the analytical work which should fall 

 to _ his share in the course of his investigations is concerned, be tempted to reduce 

 "™j the least attractive portion of his work, to within the smallest possible limits, 

 and having, for example, by a boiling-point determination or a single analytical 



