22 W. M. HAMLET. 



members to do homage to one who has been aptly termed 

 4 the Abraham of Science, and a searcher as obedient to the 

 command of truth as was the patriarch to the command of 

 God.' His brilliant and far reaching work we claim as a 

 priceless heritage, and as the master-key used in unlocking 

 the secrets in all branches of knowledge. We apply the 

 principle of evolution alike to the development of the 

 minutest bacillus seen on the stage of our microscopes or 

 the highest mammal as well as the nebulous assemblage of 

 star dust to the remoulding of the social status of man 

 himself, in a word it is evolution that becomes our guiding 

 principle in science. 



The analytical and synthetical processes in pure chemistry 

 are still flowing onwards like the mighty volume of a river, 

 through new and unknown country, yielding a continuous 

 series of revelations in myriads of transformations and 

 permutations that at once defies and bewilders the imagin- 

 ation of the best of us. In pure chemistry it is the despair 

 of the present day chemist to follow the carbon atom in the 

 long and complex chains of new bodies revealed by the 

 synthetic method. Chemistry is the most prolific branch 

 of knowledge now known to man, and last year's output of 

 new facts requires four big volumes of an aggregate of 

 3,800 pages to contain them. I shrink aghast at the impos- 

 sible task of presenting this mass of new discoveries in 

 chemistry. Each man must perforce till his own little plot 

 and dig his own insignificant furrow ; for myself I can only 

 casually point out a department in chemistry, namely the 

 autonomous science of State Chemistry which widens its 

 borders every day and is of growing importance in all parts 

 of the British Empire. It is of special importance and 

 interest to us in New South Wales, since our Premier the 

 Hon. O. G. Wade has recently introduced, and Parliament 

 has now passed the Pure Foods Act of 1908, which comes 



