8 
Transactions Texas Academy oe Science. 
to all parts of the habitable globe. Upon the civil engineer has fallen 
much of the hardship in this pioneer work and to him is due ranch of the 
credit for the advances made. John Findley Wallace, in his presidential 
address at the annual convention of the American Society of Civil Engi- 
neers, held in London, England, July, 1900, said, among other things: 
“Uo one agency has been a more potent factor in the advancement of 
civilization than improved transportation facilities, and the profession of 
civil engineering has been the force which has conceived, designed and 
executed the works and machinery which have furnished the world with 
these facilities. There is hardly a branch of the profession which does 
not touch on the principle of transportation. The construction of steam- 
ships, harbor and river improvements, docks and wharves, canals, water 
supply, sanitation, manufactories, the utilization and transmission of 
power- — in fact, it is difficult to name a branch of the profession which 
does not, either directly or indirectly, bear on the subject of transpor- 
tation. 
“The great engineers of this century have been responsible and should 
receive credit for the conception, design and execution of these works, 
without which the Americas, Asia, Africa, Australia and the isles of the 
sea would still be among the uncivilized, unknown or inaccessible portions 
of the world. * * 
In chemistry, perhaps, the influence of applied upon pure science has 
been more pronounced than in any other line. Take, for example, the 
case of the coal tar derivatives as applied to the color industry and follow 
its history with William McMurtrie, as outlined in his address before the 
chemical section of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, at the Springfield meeting, and the influence of the technologist 
upon theoretical investigations along this line will readily be seen. 
Originating from a troublesome by-product, which results from the com- 
mercial production of coal gas, the color industry has grown to be of great 
commercial importance. In speaking of technical investigations along 
this line, and of Perkin’s discovery of the oxidation product of analine, 
McMurtrie says : 
“The search after the production of a commercial product yielded, acci- 
dentally as it were, and almost empirically, the seed from which this 
great and flourishing tree has sprung.” 
Again, in speaking of the relation between pure and industrial chem- 
istry he says : 
“The coal tar color industry, which has so frequently been cited and 
described as the direct outcome of scientific investigations, will serve 
admirably to illustrate the relations we are considering. Uo one of the 
industries has been so rapid in growth or has attracted the same degree 
of attention from both scientists and technologists, or has had so wide an 
influence upon the progress of the other industries and scientific work.” 
