SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 629 



some works chemists to avail themselves of 

 opportunities offered them for acquiring 

 a broader knowledge of their profession 

 through its current literature — little need 

 now be said. It is a situation that will 

 ever exist so long as human nature remains 

 what it is and educational institutions 

 graduate low-grade men Avithout other 

 ambition than to earn a bare livelihood 

 and unwilling to endure the arduous labor 

 that must accompany earnest efforts to 

 climb the ladder of success. 



The question of applying a different 

 standard for different classes of papers 

 may also be left for the present. It is a 

 point on which the committee on relations 

 of the society to technical chemists made 

 no recommendation. It is also a question 

 of much delicacy, the solution of which 

 will work itself out in the next few years, 

 as the development and differentiation of 

 the society's publications progresses. 



The criticism that a majority of the ar- 

 ticles appearing in the Journal of the so- 

 ciety are of a non-technical character and 

 that the educators and government chem- 

 ists, through their control of the Journal, 

 crowd out articles of a technical character, 

 is as to the second point quite incorrect, 

 and as to the first, open to a very simple 

 and natural explanation. No article of 

 merit has ever been intentionally declined 

 by the committee on papers and publica- 

 tions, and those of a technical character 

 have always been welcomed. It is possible 

 that in a very few instances mistakes of 

 judgment have been made, but this applies 

 to papers relating to other lines of work 

 as well as to those offered by industrial 

 chemists. But even so, this is only an in- 

 evitable result of the fallibility of human 

 judgment. 



I have taken the trouble to tabulate the 

 contents of the Journal for the eleven years 

 preceding 1906, dividing the papers into 

 three classes, namely, those relating to (1) 



agriculture, biology, etc. ; (2) pure chem- 

 istry; (3) analytical and applied chem- 

 istry. No two persons would prepare iden- 

 tical lists because of the diflSeulty in classi- 

 fying many of the papers, especially those 

 on the border between agriculture, biology, 

 etc., on the one side, and applied science 

 and analytical methods on the other ; there- 

 fore, I will not reproduce the table. Its 

 main features, however, may be indicated, 

 confirmed as they are by those of a similar 

 table prepared by the editor, but covering 

 only the years 1895, 1900 and 1905. It is 

 shown that the agricultural and biological 

 branches taken together stand about where 

 they did eleven years ago, without appre- 

 ciable increase, so they need not be further 

 considered. It is further shown that al- 

 though the number of papers in analytical 

 and applied chemistry has increased in the 

 last semi-decade, there has been a marked 

 decrease as compared with the number 

 published eleven years ago, and that the 

 increase in papers relating to pure chem- 

 istry has been very marked in the last four 

 years, but had experienced no increase in 

 the seven years preceding and had under- 

 gone but slight fluctuations during that 

 period. It may be said that some of the 

 papers in analytical and applied chem- 

 istry listed for 1895, the year of greatest 

 productiveness in those fields, were quite 

 brief and unimportant, yet there has evi- 

 dently been an absolute decrease as to 

 number, though perhaps an improvement 

 in quality. Whether the decrease is in 

 any way attributable to the application of 

 a higher standard of requirement can not 

 be determined with certainty. It is most 

 likely that the chief cause is to be sought 

 in the inducements offered by the columns 

 of journals devoted wholly to the applica- 

 tions of chemical science. On the other 

 hand, the marked increase in papers de- 

 voted to pure science, so called, finds its 

 chief and natural explanation in the rapid 



