PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 19 



wishes and sanction the holding of local examinations. 

 Private employers and the public would very shortly fall 

 into line. The time is in my opinion not far distant when 

 some definite steps will have to be taken to ensure proper 

 qualifications among chemists and analysts, just as it has 

 been necessary in the case of medical men and dentists, 

 and it will be far preferable to take advantage of the 

 machinery of an existing institution whose qualification is 

 acknowledged all over the world, than to create a new 

 qualifying board whose decision will be discounted by 

 reason of local jealousies and prejudices. 



Co-ordination in Scientific Work. 

 There is another matter with regard to the chemical 

 work generally performed by the State, on which I would 

 like to make a few remarks. In the brief review I have 

 given of the growth of the chemical work undertaken by 

 the State Departments, it will have been noticed that the 

 procedure followed in the establishment of the different 

 laboratories has been that of decentralisation. Originally 

 the Government Analyst's laboratory conducted the whole 

 of the chemical work required by the State. As the 

 requirements grew, and the work increased in volume with 

 the development of the mining, pastoral, and agricultural 

 industries, the work was split off from the original labora- 

 tory and separate establishments were created. In the 

 same way the increase in the work of the Customs and the 

 Explosives Department has led to the establishment of 

 separate laboratories. This procedure is the reverse of 

 that which has prevailed in other countries where the 

 tendency has been towards centralisation and concentration 

 under one control. In England the various Government 

 laboratories dealing with medico-legal investigations, public 

 health, and agriculture have been amaJgamated within the 



