Prices and Quantities of Lice Stock &c. in Ireland. 613 
Highest price 
per barrel 
£ s. d. 
Wheat . . 3 7 3 in 1812 
Barley. . Ill 0 in 1801 
Oats . . 1 G 8 in 1812 
Lowest price 
per barrel 
£ s. d. 
0 16 3 in 1886 
0 9 8 in 1787 
0 7 9 in 1789 
Difference 
£ s. d 
2 11 0 
12 1 
0 18 11 
Oats have not fallen below 10s. per barrel since 1800, save in 1850, 
1834, and 1835 ; barley twice descended below 12s. per barrel 
during the same period, in 1821 and 1850. 
The feature of recent years in the price of almost every article 
has been uniformity. The great irregularities have disappeared, 
and a process of levelling is in operation, but the slope is down- 
wards, not upwards. There is a bright side, however. If statistics 
show anything, they indicate that we are consuming more ; the 
great mass of the people are living better. Cheap food is to them a 
blessing. 
Richard M. Barrington. 
THE PROGRESS OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY. 1 
It would be a hopeless task to try to indicate the whole of the 
advances in chemical knowledge that have been made within the 
last fifty years. Even at the commencement of that time, chemistry 
was by no means in its infancy. Its foundations had been securely 
laid, not only on the Continent, but in this country, and the names 
of Priestley, Cavendish, Scheele, Lavoisier, Davy, Wollaston, and 
other investigators were already household words. 
On the whole, the changes and advances in inorganic chemistry 
have not been extreme. It is in organic chemistry that what cannot 
be regarded as anything short of a revolution has taken place. 
But whatever may have been the advances in chemistry within 
the last half-century, whether as a pure or as an applied science, the 
extension of its boundaries towards physics in the one direction, and 
biological studies in the other, is at least as remarkable. While the 
study of spectrum analysis has rendered most valuable assistance in 
the chemistry of the constituent substances with which we are 
familiar upon earth, it has enabled the astronomer to carry his 
speculations not only to the constitution of the sun and stars, but to 
that of nebulae, comets, and meteors. In the domain of electricity 
it is hard to say whether that science does not owe nearly as much 
to chemistry as chemistry does to it. In the practical application 
of electricity to lighting purposes, chemistry has still to be called on 
to produce some improved form of secondary battery, and some 
1 Extracts from the Anniversary Address delivered at the Liverpool Meet- 
ing of the Society of Chemical Industry, by the President, Sir John Evans, 
K.C.B., LL.D., F.R.S., on July 12, 1893. 
