776 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 385. 



laboratory to be solved. An investigator 

 in need of expensive substances, or of me- 

 chanical appliances to handle large bulks 

 of materials, need only apply to the nearest 

 factory to have its machinery placed at 

 his disposal, or its wares furnished at little 

 or no cost. The largest factories have 

 their own research laboratories, in which a 

 hundred and more university graduates 

 and professors spend months and years on 

 single investigations, and are paid liberal 

 salaries even if their results are technically 

 worthless. One factory recently purchased 

 the entire scientific library of Kekule. The 

 manufacture of nearly all the numerous 

 coal-tar products consists merely of labora- 

 tory methods on a large scale ; and the sci- 

 entific problems solved in this connection 

 have been of the utmost importance and 

 benefit to ' pure ' science. Certain large 

 establishments prefer their chemists to 

 have had training in pure science only, 

 and then give them from three to six 

 months of technical training in their own 

 works and at their own expense. The 

 specifications of chemical patents consti- 

 tute an important section of scientific 

 literature, and the German Chemical So- 

 ciety spends large sums of money for the 

 purpose of abstracting and indexing them. 

 If we also take into consideration the un- 

 questioned preeminence of Germany in all 

 branches of chemical practice, what better 

 demonstration can we give of the funda- 

 mental unity of the profession? 



PRESENT STATUS OF INSTEUCTION. 



"We are now in a better position to re- 

 turn to the former question: What do we 

 mean by ' adequate preparation ' 1 For no 

 matter what may ultimately be agreed 

 upon, it will be identical in its first two or 

 three years for all classes of students. It 

 is a great comfort to have this important 

 point definitely settled in advance ; for one 

 of the main difficulties in arranging our 



college curricula has been the supposed 

 necessity of providing two or more coordi- 

 nate sets of courses in chemical instruction. 

 This has been a great strain on the teach- 

 ing staff as well as upon the financial re- 

 sources of the laboratory. 



An examination of a number of coUege 

 catalogues brings out the fact that at pres- 

 ent all students actually do follow es- 

 sentially the same course for about two 

 years. These courses usually consist of 

 one or two terms of general inorganic 

 chemistry and simple laboratory work, 

 one or two terms of qualitative, one or 

 two terms of quantitative, analysis; all 

 these combined so as to occupy from two to 

 three years at the rate of eight to fifteen 

 hours per week. It would seem, then, that 

 here we have the present American con- 

 ception of ' adequate preparation ' ; for the 

 subsequent courses are almost invariably 

 special short ones in various branches of 

 work. "We may well ask : Is this prepara- 

 tion really adequate? I think not; but 

 before considering it in detail as the main 

 business of this paper, a few words must 

 be said concerning these special addenda, 

 the 'finishing courses.' 



Even in some of our best institutions 

 these final courses come perilously near the 

 standard of the 'polite deportment' and 

 ' philosophy ' of young ladies' seminaries. 

 There is an unfortunate lack of caution 

 in the claims published in their catalogues. 

 Ijack of space prevents citation of many 

 of the choice extracts I have found; two 

 or three will suffice, however, for purposes 

 of illustration. One college offers a course 

 of forty-four lectures on the following 

 topics : ' metallurgy, glass, ceramics, chem- 

 icals, illuminating gas, bleaching, photog- 

 raphy, petroleum, brevsdng, wines and 

 liquors, vinegar, fats and oils, essential 

 oils and rosins, sugar, starch, glucose, milk, 

 distillation of wood, paper tanning, etc' 

 One suspects that these lectures must 



