Chemical Science. — Prescott. 283 
count of what they are doing, and what they have to do, that the 
truth may be shown on all sides. 
If it be in my. power to make the annual address of this meet- 
ing of any service at all to you who hear it — in your loyalty to the 
Association — I would bring before you some account of the work 
that is wanted in the science of chemistry. Of what the chemists 
have done in the past the arts of industry speak more plainly 
than the words of any address. Of what chemists may do in the 
future it would be quite in vain that 1 should venture to predict. 
But of the nature of the work that is waiting in the chemical 
world at the present time I desire to say what I can, and I desire 
to speak in the interests of science in general. The interests of 
science, I am well assured, cannot be held indifferent to the inter- 
ests of the public at large. 
It is not a small task to find out how the matter of the universe is 
made. The task is hard, not because of the great quantity in which 
matter exists, nor by reason of the multiplicity of the kinds and 
compounds of matter, but rather from the obscurity under which the 
actual composition of matter is hidden from man. The physicists 
reach a conclusion that matter is an array of molecules, little things, 
not so large as a millionth of a millimeter in size, and the forma- 
tion of these they leave to the work of the chemists. The smallest 
objects dealt with in science, their most distinct activities become 
known only by the widest exercise of inductive reason. 
The realm of chemical action, the world within the molecules of 
matter, the abode of the chemical atoms, is indeed a new world and 
but little known. The speculative atoms of the ancients, mere me- 
chanical divisions, although prefiguring the molecules of modern 
science yet gave no sign of the chemical atoms of this century, 
nor any account of what happens in a chemical change. A new 
field of knowledge was opened in 1774 by the discovery of ox}-- 
gen, and entered upon in 1804 by the publications of Dalton. a 
region more remote and more difficult of access than was the un- 
known continent toward which Christopher Columbus set his sails 
three- centuries earlier. The world within molecules has been 
open for only a hundretl years. The sixteenth century was not 
long enough for an exploration of the continent of America, and 
the nineteenth has not been long enough for the undertaking of 
the chemists. When four centuries of search shall have been 
made in the world of chemical formation, then science should ])e 
