194 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1023 



while any savage can eat raw meat, or can 

 readily cook, boil or roast it for consump- 

 tion. 



On this subject, we can learn much from 

 some Eastern people, like the Japanese, 

 who have become experts in the art of pre- 

 paring a variety of agreeable food products 

 from that refractory soy-bean, which con- 

 tains such an astonishingly large amount 

 of nutritious proteids, and which, long ago, 

 became for Japan a wholesome, staple 

 article of diet. 



But, on this subject, the "Western races 

 have not yet progressed much beyond the 

 point of preparing cattle-feed and paint 

 oil from the soy-bean, although the more 

 extended culture of this, or similar plants, 

 might work about a revolution in our agri- 

 cultural economies. 



Agriculture, after all, is nothing but a 

 very important branch of industrial chem- 

 istry, although most people seem to ignore 

 the fact that the whole prosperity of agri- 

 culture is based on the success of that 

 photochemical reaction which, under the 

 influence of the light of the sun, causes the 

 carbon dioxide of the air to be assimilated 

 by the chlorophyl of the plant. 



It is not impossible that photochemistry, 

 which hitherto has busied itself almost ex- 

 clusively within the narrow limits of the 

 art of making photographic images, will, 

 some day, attain a development of useful- 

 ness at least as important as all other 

 branches of physical chemistry. In this 

 broader sense, photochemistry seems an in- 

 viting subject for the agricultural chemist. 

 The possible rewards in store in this almost 

 virgin field may, in their turn, by that effect 

 of superinduction between industry and 

 science, bring about a rapid development 

 similar to what we have witnessed in the 

 advancement of electricity, as weU as chem- 

 istry, which both began to progress by 

 bounds and leaps, way ahead of other sci- 



ences, as soon as their growing industrial 

 applications put a high premium on further 

 research. 



Photochemistry may allow us some day 

 to obtain chemical effects hitherto un- 

 dreamed of. In general, the action of 

 light in chemical reactions seems incom- 

 parably less brutal than all means used 

 heretofore in chemistry. This is the prob- 

 able secret of the subtle chemical syntheses 

 which happen in plant life. To try to 

 duplicate these delicate reactions of nature 

 by our present methods of high tempera- 

 tures, electrolysis, strong chemicals and 

 other similar torture-processes, seems like 

 trying to imitate a masterpiece of Gounod 

 by exploding a dynamite cartridge between 

 the strings of a piano. 



But there are endless other directions for 

 scientific research, relating to industrin' 

 applications, which, until now, do not seem 

 to have received sufficient attention. 



For instance, from a chemical stand- 

 point, the richest chemical enterprise of the 

 United States, the petroleum industry, has 

 hitherto chiefly busied itself with a rather 

 primitive treatment of this valuable raw 

 material, and little or no attention has 

 been paid to any methods for transforming 

 at least a part of these hydrocarbons into 

 more ennobled products of commerce than 

 mere fuel or illuminants. 



A hint as to the enormous possibilities 

 which may be in store in that direction is 

 suggested by the recent work in Germany 

 and England on synthetic rubber ; the only 

 factor which prevents extending the labo- 

 ratory synthesis of rubber into an immense 

 industrial undertaking is that we have not 

 yet learned how to make cheaply the iso- 

 prene or other similar non-saturated hydro- 

 carbons which are the starting point in the 

 process which changes their molecules, by 

 polymerization, into rubber. 



Nor has our science begun to find the 



