752 THE PLACE OF RESEARCH IN EDUCATION. 



battery devised in 1842 by the present Sir William Grove, in which 

 hydrogen is burnt electrically, he was anxious to obtain a method of 

 preparing hydrogen readily in large quantities. No good method is 

 known, but a mixture of hydrogen and carbonic oxide is easily made, 

 and even Mond found that on passing this mixture over heated nickel 

 the carbonic oxide was converted partly into carbon and partly into 

 carbondioxide, and as the latter was easily removable, he thus suc- 

 ceeded in a measure in effecting his object. 



In studying the very remarkable action which nickel had on car- 

 bonic oxide, it so happened that on one occasion when experiments 

 were being made in his laboratory the escaping gas was led into the 

 flame of a burner so as to set lire to it, a necessary precaution, as the 

 gas is highly poisonous; it was noticed that instead of burning as 

 usual with a nonluminous smokeless flame it burnt with a slightly 

 luminous flame. This strange circumstance led to inquiry being made, 

 and it was eventually ascertained that the metal nickel, under certain 

 conditions, combined with the gas carbonic oxide, forming a very 

 volatile colorless liquid, and thus one of the most remarkable dis- 

 coveries of modern times was made. The discovery was communicated 

 to the Chemical Society in 1890 by Mr. Mond in conjunction with his 

 assistants, Drs. Langer and Quincke. Having observed that the com- 

 pound was very readily broken up into carbonic oxide and nickel, Mr. 

 Mond at once set to work to devise a practical method of preparing 

 nickel on a large scale from its ores through the agency of the new 

 compound, and after spending not only much time and labor, and I 

 believe also a very great deal of money, on his quest, was successful in 

 devising a process which he has carried out on the large scale during 

 several mouths past, and which has enabled him to produce over a ton 

 of metallic nickel of almost absolute purity per week — perhaps the 

 greatest achievement in metallurgy on record. Such action on the part 

 of a native-born English manufacturer is " unthinkable," at least I 

 know of no precedent which would justify us in regarding it as possible 

 under present conditions. I only recently heard of a firm who are 

 doing work of a most important and critical character, involving the 

 expenditure of a very large amount of money, who, having asked an 

 expert whether it would not be well to carefully observe the tempera- 

 ture at which their operations were conducted, on being advised that 

 it was most important to do so, objected that an instrument for the 

 purpose, costing £25, was too expensive to use. The foreign worker 

 would seek to know what happens at any cost. 



If the English nation is to do even its fair share of the work of the 

 world, in the future, its attitude must be entirely changed — it must 

 realize that steam and electricity have brought about a complete revo- 

 lution; that the application of scientific principles and methods is 

 becoming so universal elsewhere that all here who wish to succeed 

 must adopt them, and therefore understand them. It rests with our 



