August 1, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



195 



best uses for such inexpensive and never 

 exhaustible vegetable products as cellu- 

 lose or starch. Quite true, several impor- 

 tant manufactures, like that of paper nitro- 

 cellulose, glucose, alcohol, vinegar and 

 some others, have been built on it; but to 

 the chemist at least, it seems as if a much 

 greater development is possible in the 

 cheaper and more extended production of 

 artificial fiber. Although we have suc- 

 ceeded in making so-called artificial silk, 

 this article is still very expensive ; further- 

 more, we have not yet produced a cheap, 

 good, artificial fiber of the quality of wool. 



If we have made ourselves independent 

 of Chile for our nitrogen supply, we are 

 still absolutely at the mercy of the Stass- 

 furt mines in Germany for our require- 

 ments of soluble potash-salts, which are 

 just as necessary for agriculture. Shall 

 we succeed in utilizing some of the pro- 

 posed methods for converting that abun- 

 dant supply of feldspar, or other insoluble 

 potash-bearing rocks, into soluble potash- 

 salts by combining the expensive heat treat- 

 ment with the production of another mate- 

 rial like cement, which would render the 

 cost of fuel less exorbitant? Or shall the 

 problem be solved in setting free soluble 

 potassium salts as a by-product in a reac- 

 tion engendering other staple products con- 

 sumed in large quantities? 



We have several astonishingly conflict- 

 ing theories about the constitution of the 

 center of the globe, but we have not yet 

 developed the means to penetrate the 

 world's crust beyond some deep mines — 

 merely an imperceptible faint scratch on 

 the surface — and in the meantime, we keep 

 on guessing, while to-day astronomers know 

 already more about the surface of the 

 planet Mars than we know about the inte- 

 rior of the globe on which we live. 



Nor have we learned to develop or utilize 

 the tremendous pressures under which most 



minerals have been formed, and stiU less 

 do we possess the means to try these pres- 

 sures, in conjunction with intensely high 

 temperatures. 



No end of work is in store for the re- 

 search chemist, as well as for the chemical 

 engineer, who can think by himself, with- 

 out always following the beaten track. We 

 are only at the beginning of our successes, 

 and yet, when we stop to look back to see 

 what has been accomplished during the last 

 generations, that big jump from the rule- 

 of-thumb to applied science is nothing 

 short of marvelous. 



Whoever is acquainted with the condi- 

 tion of human thought to-day must find it 

 strange, after aU, that scarcely seventy 

 years ago, Mayer met with derision even 

 amongst the scientists of the time, when 

 he announced to the world that simple but 

 fundamental principle of the conservation 

 of energy. 



We can hardly conceive that just about 

 the time the Columbia School of Mines 

 was founded, Liebig was still ridiculing 

 Pasteur's ideas on the intervention of 

 micro-organisms in fermentation, which 

 have proved so fecund in the most epoch- 

 making applications in science, medicine, 

 surgery and sanitation, as well as in many 

 industries. 



Fortitnately, true science, contrary to 

 other human avocations, recognizes nobody 

 as an " authority, ' ' and is willing to change 

 her beliefs as often as better studied facts 

 warrant it; this difference has been the 

 most vital cause of her never ceasing prog- 

 ress. 



To the younger generation, surrounded 

 with research laboratories everywhere, it 

 may cause astonishment to learn that 

 scarcely fifty years ago, that great bene- 

 factor of humanity, Pasteur, was still re- 

 peating his pathetic pleadings with the 

 French government to give him more suitar 



