PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 423 
of one of the carbon atoms with its attached radicals relatively to the other 
would be 
H H H 
OH C *CO,H OH C ‘CO,H OH C ‘CO,H 
con OH 1-6 -Co,t H-‘'C-H 
ene He: Aberson’s Wes 98° 
With the inactive asparagine it is supposed by Erlenmeyer that prolonged heating 
in aqueous solution produces a rotation of this type, possibly to an unequal extent 
or in opposite directions in the dextro- and levo-forms, whereby the products 
being no longer antipodes become separable by ordinary laboratory methods. It 
is too early yet to say whether, by exclusion of all asymmetric influences, the 
riddle has been solved, but it is easy to understand with what interest confirma- 
tion of Erlenmeyer’s results is awaited. 
Honours Students and Post-Graduate Scholarships. 
In bringing this address to a conclusion, it will not be an innovation if I 
refer—it shall be only briefly—to the training of those who will carry on and 
amplify the work which we in this generation have attempted to do. This 
section stands for the advancement of chemistry, which includes, so closely are 
pure and applied chemistry intertwined, the advancement of chemistry as applied 
to industry. Once again the cry has been raised in the press®’ that chemists 
trained in our Universities are of little value in industrial pursuits; they are 
too academic; they are not worth their wage—little as that often is, whether 
judged by a labourer’s hire or the cost of a university training. It may be so. 
On the other hand, it is possible the employer obtains all that he pays for, and 
by paying more would receive in return much more by the inducement offered to 
more highly trained men to enter the field. Three years’ training for the 
ordinary degree cannot carry a student very far in chemistry, and this pre- 
liminary training—for it is little more—is insufficient to equip the young 
graduate for more than routine work. With the Honours student it is otherwise. 
He must either enter on his three years’ residence at a University with a 
knowledge which does not fall below the requirements of the Intermediate 
Examination, and devote the greater part of his time to his Honours subject, 
or he must be prepared to spend a fourth year to reach the necessary standard. 
More highly equipped in the academic sense than a man who has worked only 
for the ordinary degree, he undoubtedly is, yet there is seldom time to begin his 
_ training in research methods or in methods of commercial analysis where rapidity 
rather than extreme accuracy is the object in view. 
Two reforms, I venture to think, are needed: the first would avoid early 
specialisation, which is apt to be disastrous, the second would encourage 
post-graduate training in directions where the student’s inclinations or 
aptitude may be stimulated and developed. If the Civic Universities, estab- 
lished in virtue of charters drafted mainly on similar lines and inspired by 
similar aims, could come to some agreement requiring three years’ residence, sub- 
sequent to the Intermediate, for an Honours degree in chemistry, the first reform 
would be effected—it is a measure for which a strong case can be made out. Tf, 
further, they could see their way to standardise their Ordinances and Regula- 
tions for the M.Sc. degree, cease to confer it on Honours graduates of one or more 
years’ seniority in return for payment of a fee, and confine it to graduates— 
not necessarily Honours graduates—who have carried out an approved piece of 
research during not less than one academic year, Selection Committees, Boards 
of Directors, or individual employers would have some clue to the type of man 
before them. I would go further and suggest that the interchange of Honours 
graduates between the Civic Universities, or between them and other Universi- 
ties or Colleges, if it could be arranged, would be of much benefit to the student 
himself. No University in this country is wealthy enough to attract to its service 
teachers who are pre-eminent in each branch of chemistry. How great, then, 
*7 Cf. The Times, Engineering Suppl., 1913, May 7, 21, 28, June 4, 11, 18. 
