May 22, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



803 



find a place better supplied with the raw 

 materials of glass making, and possibly this 

 will account in some degree for the 

 development of the industry there. But 

 not entirely. And so we have various ex- 

 planations of its origin. The ancient 

 Egyptians were skilled metallurgists and 

 smelted copper, iron, lead and tin and also 

 refined the noble metals. One hypothesis 

 says that the Egyptians first became ac- 

 quainted with glass owing to the accidental 

 similarity of the slag from one of their 

 furnaces with that product. Another 

 states that the burning of piles of straw 

 frequently results in the production of 

 glass because the potash in the ash com- 

 bines with the sand and lime of the ash 

 or of the soil beneath, in the heat of the 

 conflagration. And you are all probably 

 familiar with the old story accrediting the 

 discovery to the Phoenicians, those bold 

 seamen and traders of ancient times. This 

 story, which is told by Pliny, that old 

 Roman, than whom I suppose no man ever 

 recorded more truth and untruth, relates 

 how a certain Phoenician ship laden with 

 soda was moored off a sandy shore, and 

 how the merchants came ashore from the 

 ship to cook their evening meal. There 

 were no stones at hand on which to rest 

 their pots and so they brought ashore 

 some lumps of soda from their ship. As 

 their fire grew hotter, the soda and sand 

 fused and they were surprised to behold 

 transparent streams (molten glass) flowing 

 forth and consisting of a liquid previously 

 unknown. The tale is interesting, for any 

 tale is true as long as the telling lasts, 

 but we know that the Phoenicians learned 

 the art of glass making from the Egyp- 

 tians. 



But in whatever manner the ancient 

 peoples learned the art of making glass 

 and other chemical arts, it is certain that 

 as one age succeeded another, the informa- 

 tion spread and was handed down from 



father to son, from generation to genera- 

 tion. The arts were improved and a con- 

 siderable store of chemical facts were 

 acquired, in a practical way, concerning 

 practical chemical processes. And I en- 

 deavored to show, besides the fact that 

 chemical industries were established so long 

 before the science of chemistry, the further 

 fact that the science of chemistry owes a 

 great debt of gratitude to manufacturing 

 industry. In this way: If the chemical 

 knowledge of the ancients could have been 

 transmitted to the middle ages and the 

 modern world only by books, we would 

 know little or nothing of the facts which 

 they slowly and laboriously acquired. 

 Ancient records and books are extremely 

 few in number, and worse than that, the 

 scientific writings, when they are not 

 purely speculative, are quite unreliable. 

 The Greek and Roman poets recorded 

 quite as many facts as did the philosophers 

 and prose writei-s, and strange to say, the 

 student of ancient knowledge refers as 

 frequently to the ancient poets as to others. 

 I repeat then, that if the world had been 

 dependent upon written books for the 

 transmission of chemical knowledge for, 

 say, from 5000 B.C. to a.d. 1200, it would 

 have fared poorly. There were two 

 methods by which that knowledge was 

 transmitted. The first, the alchemistic 

 writings of the Egyptians and the Ara- 

 bians; and second, the traditional knowl- 

 edge of the chemical industries. The 

 laboratory chemistry of the period I have 

 mentioned was, in the early part of it, 

 somewhat alchemistic in its tendency and 

 in the latter part avowedly and emphatic- 

 ally so. Now all alchemistic records must 

 be taken with plenty of seasoning, and are 

 rather poor and vmnutritious chemical 

 food at that. And so I say that the prin- 

 cipal means by which the chemical knowl- 

 edge of the ancients was transmitted to 

 the modern world was by means of the 



