86 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
brass ‘and other industries. State support and encouragement are un- 
doubtedly powerful factors in the rapid progress now taking place in 
every branch of metallurgical science in this country, and there is scarcely 
any related industry which can fail to benefit. 
Revenue.—Since the war the principal matters affecting the revenue 
are the higher duties, which have rendered necessary a further denaturation 
of aleohol. Improved facilities have been granted for the use of alcohol 
for scientific purposes and in industry ; regulations have been formulated 
for the use of power alcohol, and duties have been established on imported 
fine chemicals and synthetic dyestufis. 
Health_—The food shortage during the war called attention to the nature 
and quantity of our food supplies, and led to further investigations being 
undertaken by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research on 
food preservation and storage. Activity is also shown by the appointment 
of Committees which are working on the subject of preservatives and colour- 
ing matter in food, and on the pollution of rivers by sewage and trade 
effluents. A great field is open in the co-operation of chemistry with 
medicine in the discovery of substances suitable for the treatment of the 
numerous diseases now traced to parasites in the blood. 
Agriculture.—So far as fertilisers are concerned, the lack of a supply of 
fixed nitrogen from the air which obtained throughout the war has now 
been rectified, and Great Britain for the first time is no longer exceptional 
among the nations by neglecting to provide itself with synthetic ammonia 
for agriculture and for munitions. Such war-time expedients as the use 
of nitre-cake instead of sulphuric acid for making ammonium sulphate 
and superphosphate and the recovery of potash from flue-dust have 
not survived, but there has been a gain in the further development of 
‘synthetic farmyard manure’ and the increased use of basic slag. The 
present activity in research in agricultural chemistry of a fundamental 
character is leading to a better understanding of problems of the soil and 
of plant and animal nutrition, and cannot fail to be of ultimate benefit 
to farming. 
Organised Applied Research and Assisted General Research.—Established 
during the war as a result of an appreciation of the contrast between 
the successful application of scientific method to military purposes and 
the want of such application to many of our manufactures, the Department 
of Scientific and Industrial Research has extended over a wide field. 
Its main activities have been sketched in the directions of State encourage- 
ment to industry to apply chemistry to its problems, of State investigation 
of vital problems beyond the sphere of private enterprise, and of assistance 
to workers in the purely academic field. In all these spheres activity is 
shown by the contributions to knowledge already forthcoming. 
In the expansion that has occurred in the chemical sections of State 
Departments since the war, it is interesting to note the increase in the 
number of chemists that are employed. As far as can be gathered, the 
number of chemists working in departments maintained wholly by the 
State is 375 for the present year, compared with 150 in 1912, while in 
