B.— CHEMISTRY. 49 
instrument by which the investigation of basal changes may be carried to 
regions beyond those encompassed by the astronomer and the 
microscopist. 
It is not within the purpose of this address to survey that revolu- 
tion which is now taking place in the conception of atomic structure ; 
contributions to this question will be made in our later proceedings 
and will be followed with deep interest by all members of the Section. 
Fortunately for our mental balance the discoveries of the current 
century, whilst profoundly modifying the atomic imagery inherited 
from our predecessors, have not yet seriously disturbed the principles 
underlying systematic organic chemistry, but they emphasise in a 
forcible manner the intimate connection between different branches 
of science, because it is from the mathematical physicist that these new 
ideas have sprung. Their immediate value is to reaffirm the outstanding 
importance of borderline research and to stimulate interest in sub- 
microscopic matter. 
This interest presents itself to the chemist very early in life and 
dominates his operations with such insistence as to become axiomatic. 
So much so that he regards the universe as a vast theatre in which 
atomic and molecular units assemble and interplay, the resulting 
patterns into which they fall depending on the physical conditions 
imposed by nature. This enables him to regard micro-organisms as 
co-practitioners of his craft, and the chemical achievements of these 
humble agents have continued to excite his admiration since they were 
revealed by Pasteur. The sixty years which have now elapsed are rich 
in contributions to that knowledge which comprises the science of micro- 
biochemistry, and in this province, as in so many others, we have to 
deplore the fact that the principal advances have been made in countries 
other than our own. On this ground, fortified by the intimate relation 
of the science to a number of important industries, A. Chaston 
Chapman, in a series of illuminating and attractive Cantor Lectures in 
December, 1920, iterated his plea of the previous year for the founda- 
tion of a National Institute of Industrial Micro-biology, whilst H. E. 
Armstrong, in Birmingham a few weeks later, addressed an appeal 
to the brewing industry, which, although taking the form of a memorial 
lecture, is endowed with many lively features depicting in characteristic 
form the manner in which the problems of brewing chemistry should, 
in his opinion, be attacked. 
Lamenting as we now do so bitterly the accompaniments and conse- 
quences of war, it is but natural to snatch at the slender compensations 
which it offers, and not the least among these must be recognised the 
stimulus which it gives to scientific inquiry. Pasteur’s Etudes sur la 
Biére were inspired by the misfortunes which overtook his country in 
1870-71, and the now well-known process of Connstein and Liidecke 
for augmenting the production of glycerol from glucose was engendered 
by parallel circumstances. That acquaintance with the yeast-cell 
which was an outcome of the former event had, by the time of the 
latter discovery, ripened into a firm friendship, and those who slander 
the chemical activities of this genial fungus are defaming a potential 
benefactor. Equally culpable are those who ignore them. If children 
