THE QUARTERLY 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
JULY, 1877. 
I. THE CHEMISTRY OF THE FUTURE. 
C>:- 
* N selecting this subject we lay no claim either to the gift 
of second sight or to the possession of a clearer view 
of the future development of Science than may be the 
lot of our contemporaries. Nor is it our purpose to write 
an imitation of Winterl’s celebrated “ Prodromus,” in which 
enthusiasts may find whatever they think proper. We seek 
merely to call the attention of our fellow-workers, and espe- 
cially of students, to certain researches which hold out great 
promise, and which, if duly followed up, will undoubtedly 
have a most important influence on the very foundations of 
chemistry. 
It must be confessed that, as regards these very founda- 
tions, the alphabet of the science, our knowledge is not 
merely limited, but unsatisfactory in the highest degree. 
Look at our “ elements.” Most chemists quietly accept 
them as ultimate faCts, and work with them — or perhaps 
play with them — more or less judiciously, quietly waiving 
all inquiry into their nature and their origin. Are they ab- 
solutely elementary bodies, distinct from the beginning, and 
resolvable neither into each other nor into any forms of 
matter still unknown ? Or are they compounds, elementary 
in the mere relative acceptation that their decomposition is 
a task not within our present knowledge and power. Have 
we any evidence of their simplicity other than what our 
grandfathers had of the supposed elementary character of 
potash and soda prior to Davy’s great discovery ? If com- 
pounds, are they all of the same order, or are some of them, 
perhaps, resolvable into the remainder, whilst these, in turn, 
consist of ultimate — or at least ulterior — bodies, as yet un- 
discovered ? If simple, are they like the wheels and pinions 
VOL. vii. (n.s.) u 
