SECTION B.—CHEMISTRY. 
THE CHEMISTRY OF SOLIDS. 
‘ADDRESS BY 
Proressor CECIL H. DESCH, D.Sc., Pu.D., F.R.S., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
In entering on the task of delivering an address from this chair, my 
predecessors have often selected a special topic for consideration, but 
have prefaced their remarks by a glance at the general position of chemistry 
at the time. This precedent I propose to follow, in the belief that it is 
well for us to give attention now and then to the relations of chemistry to 
the great body of science as a whole. Two tendencies are clearly visible, 
and are profoundly affecting our methods of study and instruction, and 
also the direction of research. On the one hand, chemistry, like every 
other science, is being split up into a number of distinct specialisms, and 
workers are tempted or even compelled to confine themselves to a narrow 
field; on the other, the boundaries between the several sciences are 
becoming less definite, through the development of border sciences, 
which themselves become new specialisms. In so far as it is possible to 
arrange the abstract sciences in a linear series, chemistry may be said 
to depend upon physics, as the biological sciences in their turn depend 
upon chemistry, the theoretical part of each being built up on the 
established laws of the preceding science as a basis. Physics has gone 
far to provide the required basis for chemistry, and each new advance in 
physics suggests new ideas in chemistry. Chemistry in its turn is pro- 
viding a basis for biology, although more slowly than had been hoped. 
Great as have been the triumphs of organic synthesis and of investigations 
of the colloidal state, the chemical study of living organisms is still looking 
to chemistry for more help than it has yet received. It is in this field that 
we may hope for the greatest advances in the near future, as the importance 
of a sound chemical foundation for biological science is more clearly 
recognised. 
Whether we look at the serious publications dealing expressly with 
the progress of science or at the mass of popular articles in newspapers 
and periodicals, we see that the centre of interest at the present day lies 
in the new discoveries and hypotheses of physics. Leaving aside the 
practical applications of physical science, such as the improvement of 
wireless communication, which absorb the greater part of the popular 
interest, there is no question but that the structure of the atom, the 
theories of relativity and of quanta, the existence of the ether, and the 
results of the examination of crystals by means of X-rays, interest the 
educated public more deeply than any questions in chemical or, probably, 
