FATAL EXPLOSION OF HYDROGEN. 
349 
THE MANUFACTURING AND SCIENTIFIC CHEMISTS OF GLASGOW. 
An important and interesting meeting of the Manufacturing and Scientific Chemists of 
Glasgow and its neighbourhood was held at the Victoria Hotel, West George Street, ou 
the 12th of December. The company consisted of about fifty gentlemen, who dined 
together, Mr. E. C. C. Stanford, a well-known member of our Society, and Director of 
the British Seaweed Company, presiding. Most of the leading chemical works of Glas¬ 
gow were represented, as well as the less numerous class of professional chemists, in¬ 
cluding Professor Anderson, of the University. The immediate object of the meeting 
was to promote a more intimate acquaintance among all classes of scientific chemists in 
the neighbourhood, and to extend the cultivation of chemical science by the formation 
of a Chemical Society. 
The Chairman, in opening the after-dinner business, alluded to the necessity there was 
in the present day, for chemists to use all available means to enable them to keep pace with 
the rapidly advancing progress of chemical knowledge. “ So rapid,” he said, “ is the ad¬ 
vance of chemistry, and in such a geometrically increasing ratio does it enlarge its boun¬ 
daries, that even we younger men have the greatest difficulty in keeping pace with it. We 
find the words to which we attached definite meanings stowed away in what Dr. Anderson 
at Dundee happily described as “ scientific lumber-rooms,” and our cherished chemical 
nomenclature tottering to its base, and the ruins coming down about our ears under the 
attacks of chemists, many of whom have left school since we did. It is true of chemistry 
that it has “ no good old times,” for the present time is its oldest and its best. And 
this progress deeply concerns chemical manufacturers, who have the greatest need to 
watch the rapidly-occurring changes in the science they apply. In speaking on a paper 
by Mr. Bell, of Newcastle, Dr. Odling said at Duudee that although he had been engaged 
in teaching the science of chemistry for many years—and he is one of our best teachers 
—he never entered a large chemical work but he felt his ignorance of the great methods 
by which that knowledge he taught was practically applied, and he expressed the views 
of all theoretical chemists—it is so easy to perform our reactions in the laboratory ; but 
none but those who have tried it know the difficulties that rise up and meet the manu¬ 
facturer who dares to attempt large improvements. Courage, patience, and perseverance 
must be his. He must not be the man of one idea, he must not know chemistry alone, 
hut his knowledge must extend to and include all the physical sciences, and every ap¬ 
plication must pay. 
“This city has great reason to be proud of its chemical factories—nearly every known 
branch is here represented. Long before the stranger who approaches Glasgow sees the 
flames of her forges, or hears the sound of her hammers, his attention must be arrested 
by her tall chimney-shafts; the masts to which her chemical flag is nailed, and her 
manufacturers’ challenge held high before the world. If a factory can be measured by 
its height, one of these stands distinguished and pre-eminent. Humboldt called ‘che¬ 
mistry the Egyptian art,’ and unless it should return to that country, and one of the 
pyramids be converted so that it “draws” even better than at present, our friend Mr. 
Townsend will still reign without a rival, and never be able to compete with any one 
his own size. Glasgow is no less distinguished for its scientific chemists ; Thomson, 
Ure, and a long list of names form a brilliant scroll. Here, then, of all cities, the 
scientific stranger will expect to find one of the best chemical societies in the kingdom.” 
We understand, although no definite resolutions to that effect were passed, that the 
meeting may be considered the first step to the formation of a Chemical Society of 
Glasgow'. 
FATAL EXPLOSION OF HYDROGEN. 
An inquest has been held at Guy’s Hospital respecting the death of a young woman 
who was killed at Greenwich by the explosion of a vessel of hydrogen gas, which her 
father was making for the lime-light at the Greenwich theatre. The father, who said 
he had studied chemistry for twenty-five years, pave a description of the process he 
adopted in preparing the gas, and an explanation of what he conceived to have been 
the cause of the explosion, which, if correctly reported, does not indicate any great 
amount of scientific knowledge. He ascribed the accident to the effect of the coldness 
of the preceding night upon the solution of sulphate of iron left in the apparatus from 
