Till. ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS. 



while the monthly general meetings were well attended and 

 appreciated by members. The feature of modern chemistry is the 

 vast accumulation of facts relating to a great number of bodies of 

 interest to widely varying departments of human life. Enumer- 

 ating the various branches of the science he said that pure chemistry 

 dealt essentially with the properties and transformations of what 

 we provisionally term ' matter.' The known properties and 

 behaviour of matter carry us back in imagination to remote periods 

 of this planet's history, when as yet silicon and oxygen had not 

 united to give us material for the sister science of geology to deal 

 with. Coming down to historic periods we found the early history 

 of Chemistry in the land of the Nile, but in considering the 

 historic periods of the north of Africa, it was almost impossible 

 to avoid digressing for a moment or two on what is taking place 

 in the south of the same continent, events which are regarded by 

 the man of science as ugly survivals, not of the fittest, but of the 

 undesirable. Going back to the ancient land of Egypt, modern 

 discovery gives us some interesting facts that awaken sympathy 

 in the chemist as well as the antiquarian, such as the origin of 

 the words : — alchemy, chemistry, nitre, ammonia, Rame (a name 

 for copper that has probably been handed down from Ra the Sun 

 god of the old Egyptians). Four words of Arabic or Egyptian 

 source were taken as the text or frame work of this address, 

 namely, alchemy, alkali, alkaloid and alcohol. Under the first 

 came a brief review of the most prominent alchemists. The 

 second afforded scope for the derivation of the word denoting the 

 volatile alkali — the alkaline air — ammonia. In the case of the 

 term alkaloid the researches of Fischer were referred to as showing 

 the constitution of such alkaloids as theobromine and caffeine 

 from structural formulae of uric acid. Under the generic term 

 'alcohol' the fermentation of other substances than those in use 

 for the production of spirits of wine were dealt with. Commencing 

 with the organisms that cause the fermentation of urine, yielding 

 the compound ammonia carbonate, detailed reference was made 

 to the application of the principles of fermentation to the crude 



