Sept. 7, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



235 



ing is insufficient, but with the innumerable possibilities of fluid 

 motion it seems almost impossible but that an explanation of the 

 properties of the universe will be found in this conception. Any- 

 thing purporting to be an explanation founded on such ideas as 

 "an inherent property of matter to attract," or building up big 

 elastic solids out of little ones, is not of the nature of an ultimate 

 explanation at all ; it can only be a temporary stopping place. 

 There are metaphysical grounds, too, for reducing matter to motion 

 and potential to kinetic energy. 



These ideas are not new, but it is well to enunciate them from 

 time to time, and a presidential address in Section A is a fitting 

 time. Besides all this it has become the fashion to indulge in 

 quaint cosmical theories and to dilate upon them before learned 

 societies and in learned journals. I would suggest, as one who has 

 been bogged in this quagmire, that a successor in this chair might 

 well devote himself to a review of the cosmical theories propounded 

 within the last few years. The opportunities for piquant criticism 

 would be splendid. 



Returning to the sure ground of experimental research let us for a 

 moment contemplate what is betokened by this theory that in 

 electro-magnetic engines we are using as our mechanism the ether, 

 the medium that fills all known space. It was a great step in 

 human progress when man learnt to make material machines, when 

 he used the elasticity of his bow and the rigidity of his arrow to 

 provide food and defeat his enemies. It was a great advance when 

 he learnt to use the chemical action of fire ; when he learnt to use 

 water to float his boats and air to drive them ; when he used 

 artificial selection to provide himself with food and domestic 

 animals. For two hundred years he has made heat his slave to 

 drive his machinery. Fire, water, earth, and air have long been 

 his skives, but it is only within the last few years that man has 

 won the battle lost by the giants of old, has snatched the thunder- 

 bolt from Jove himself and enslaved the all-pervading e'her. 



ABSTRACT OF THE ADDRESS TO THE CHEMICAL 

 SECTION OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



By Professor William A. Tilden, D.Sc. Lond , F.R.S., 

 F.C.S., President of the Section. 



The fact that at the last meeting cf the Association a Committee 

 was appointed to inquire into the methods at present adopted for 

 teaching chemi-try suggested that, as I had not been able to accept 

 an inviation to join this Committee, I might make use of this oppor- 

 tunity for contributing to the discussion. The first report of the 

 Committee will be received with much interest by the Section. As 

 might be expected, it embodies the expression of many varieties of 

 opinion. 



The existence of chemistry as a department of science not merely 

 requiring the observation of facts that are to be made useful, but 

 seeking in the accumulated stores of observation to discover law, is 

 a thing of comparatively recent growth. How chemistry arose out 

 of alchemy I need not remind you, but the connection between the 

 study of chemistiy and that of medicine, and the maintenance of 

 this connection down to even the present generation, is illustrated 

 by the fact that a large number of men who have become eminent 

 as chemists began their career in the surgery or the pharmacv. 

 Black, Davy, Berzelius, Wollaston, Wohler, Wurtz, Andrews, and 

 W. A. Miller began by the study of medicine, whilst Scheele, H. 

 Rose, and the great names of Liebig and Dumas are to be found in 

 the lorg roll of those who received their earliest notions of chemistry 

 in the pharmaceutical laboratory. Chemistry has been gradually 

 emancipated from these associations with enormous advantage to 

 both sides. So long as technical purposes alone were held in 

 view a scientific chemistry could not exist, but no sooner did the 

 study take an independent form and direction than multitudes of use- 

 ful applications of the facts discovered became apparent. 



In the old time such instruction in chemistry as was given in the 

 universities and mining or technical schools seems to have taken the 

 form of lectures read by the Professor, and access to a laboratory 

 for practical manipulation seems to have been a high privilege, 

 accorded only under exceptional circumstances to the few. We are 

 told, for example, that when Liebig went to Paris in 1823 he applied 

 to Gay-Lussac for practical instruciion at first without success, and 

 that admission to the laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique was 

 ultimately granted him only through the intervention of Von 

 Humboldt. 



Doubtless, therefore, the recollection of his own early difficulties 

 when seeking instruction contributed laigely to influence Liebig in 

 the establishment of the laboratory in me University of Giessen, 

 and in the adoption of the principles which guided his teaching 

 ther;. For the first time in the history of chemistry, students met 



not merely to listen to the discourse of a professor concerning his 

 own experiments and conclusions, but to examine for themselves the 

 basis of the theories taught, to learn the processes of analysis, and 

 by independent investigation to extend the boundaries of existirg 

 knowledge. 



The fame of the new school spread fast and far, and soon men 

 from every part of the civilised world assembled to share in the 

 advantages offered. The influence of the new method can be esti- 

 mated when we reflect that nearly all the now passing generation of 

 chemists in England and America obtained the greater part of their 

 training in Liebig's laboratory ; and as a large number of them have 

 been teachers, it may be assumed that they transplanted into their 

 own countries the methods they had leaint from the great German 

 master. 



It was not till 1846. long after the school at Giessen had risen 

 into fame, that in England a sense of our deficiencies in respect to 

 provision for teaching chemistry was felt strongly enough to lead to 

 the establishment of a college of chemistry. At that time the Pro 

 fessor of Chemistryat Oxford was also Professor of Botany. At 

 Cambridge it was thought praise and boast enough that the occupant 

 of the chair of chemistry had, during more than thirty years, fre- 

 quently resided at the University, and every year gave a course of 

 lectures. The Jacksonian professorship was not then, as now, in 

 the possession of a chemist. University College, London, had at 

 this period a very distinguished man in the chair of chemistry, but 

 it was only in 1848 that a commodious laboratory was provided by 

 public subscription, raised in commemoration of the services of Dr. 

 Birkbeck in promoting popular education. In that year Fownes 

 was appointed to co-operate with Graham in the work of teaching, 

 though his premature death soon after left but little time for the ful- 

 filment of the rich promise of his earlier days. At Manchester John 

 Owens had died in 1S46, leaving the bulk of his estate lor the 

 purpose of establishing a university in Manchester, but as yet the 

 Owens College was not. 



The foundation of the College of Chemistry in 1S46 was therefore 

 an event of supreme importance in the history of chemical teaching ■ 

 in this country. 



Since then the means of instruction in science in England have 

 multiplied enormously. In University College, London, founded in 

 1 S28, and in Owens College, Manchester, founded in 1851, not only 

 have chairs of chemistiy existed from the first, but they have been 

 occupied by a succession of chemists of the highest eminence. But 

 long after 1846 the whole of the serious teaching of scientific 

 chemistry was accomplished at the College of Chemistry, and it was 

 nigh upon twenty years before the Manchester school began to 

 attract considerable notice. 



In 1S72-3 the movement set in which has resulted in the erection 

 of colleges for higher instruction at a number of important English 

 and Welsh towns. These, together with the pre-existent Queen's 

 Colleges in Ireland and the Universities of more ancient foundation 

 in the three kingdoms, are for the most part provided with pretty 

 good laboratories and a competent staff. We have also the Normal 

 School of Science and the Institute raised by the City and Guilds of 

 London at South Kensington, and its Associate College at Finsbury. 

 England is therefore at the present time as well provided with places 

 of instruction for the study of chemistry as any country in the world. 



It is nevertheless true that increased opportunities for study, a 

 considerable supply of capable teachers, and an enormous body of 

 students have not produced such an amount of original investiga- 

 tion, or even of accurate analytical work, as might reasonably be 

 expected. A full and complete explanation of all the influences 

 which contribute to this result would be difficult ; but I think the 

 apparent inactivity of the chemical schools in this country is not 

 generally the fault of the professors, but is chargeable in the main 

 to the ignorance, and partly to the indifference, of the public. 



In the case of chemistry the absence of sentiment in favour of 

 concentration and thoroughness, and the demand for superficiality, 

 if only it can be had wholesale, tells in a variety of ways. The 

 governing bodies who control the various colleges and universities, 

 and the public generally, cannot understand that good and useful 

 work is being done unless it can be shown in the form of passes at 

 examinations. Though I most firmly believe in the necessity for 

 examinations, serious mischief begins when they are regarded as the 

 end itself, and not as mere incidents in the student's career towards 

 the end, which should be knowledge. 



Reflect also upon the fact that there are only two or three colleges 

 in this country which can boast of more than one professor of 

 chemistry. In nearly all cases one man is called upon to discharge 

 the duty of teaching classes both elementary and advanced, in pure 

 and applied chemistry, inorganic and organic, theoretical and 

 practical. This is a kind of thing which kills specialism, and with- 

 out specialists we can have not only no advance, but no efficient 

 teaching of more than rudiments. 



