BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
163 
I must differ in opinion from Mr. Roberts as to the source from whence he 
obtains the Kinate of Lime. The first authorities tell us that it exists in all the 
Cinchonas. According to Bucholz’s analysis, “ Loxa Bark” contains nearly one 
and a half per cent, of this salt. 
Park Terrace, Regent's Park. Edmund WlIITE. 
BRITISH ASSOCIATION TOR THE ADVANCEMENT OE 
SCIENCE. 
The thirty-third meeting of this Association was opened at Newcastle-on-Tyne on 
Wednesday, August 26th. The attendance was unusually large, and financially the 
meeting must have been one of the most successful of the series. The arrangements made 
both for science and recreation gave universal satisfaction ; and the fact that nine hun¬ 
dred ladies enrolled their names as members was a sort of guarantee that the lighter 
element of the meeting would not be neglected. 
The meeting of the General Committee was held in the morning for the dispatch of 
business, and after the reading of the Report of the Council, was adjourned till the even¬ 
ing, when Professor Willis resigned the chair to Sir William Armstrong, who then deli¬ 
vered his inaugural address. The following is a list of the names of the officers of 
Section B.— Chemical Science: — President: Professor A. W. Williamson. Vice- 
Presidents: Dr. Andrew's, J. L. Bell, Professor Deville, J. P. Gassiot, Dr. Gladstone, 
Professor W. A. Miller, Dr. T. Richardson. Secretaries : Professor Liveing, A. Vernon 
Harcourt, H. L. Pattinson, J. C. Stevenson. Committee: F. A. Abel, Dr. Attfield, 
E. J. J. Browell, J. G. Barford, A. Crum Browm, R. C. Clapham, W. Crookes, H. 
Deane, G. C. Foster, Dr. Gilbert, G. Gladstone, Sir R. Kane, Dr. S. Macadam, Dr. 
Matthiessen, Dr. Paul, J. Pattinson, Professor Rowney, Dr. Murray Thompson, Professor 
Wanklyn, P. Worsley. 
Professor Williamson said : One of the features of our science is the rate at which 
materials have been accumulating by the labours of chemists in the so-called organic 
department of the science. The study of the transformation of organic bodies leads to 
the discovery of new acids, new bases, new alcohols, new ethers, and at a constantly in¬ 
creasing rate. Some of these new substances are found to possess properties which can at 
once be applied to practical manufacturing processes, such as dyeing, but the greater 
number of them remain in our laboratories and museums, and text-books. New disco¬ 
veries are constantly coming in to fill up the gaps which still disfigure our growing 
system. In mineral or inorganic chemistry, there is not the same scope for discovery 
at present, inasmuch as the elements which belong to it do not combine in those nu¬ 
merous proportions which occur among the chief elements of organic bodies. But yet, 
mineral chemistry has not been standing still, for even the heavy metals, most remote 
in their properties from those volatile and unstable substances of organic chemistry, 
have been got in many instances to combine together, and the organic metallic bodies 
thus formed have not only proved most valuable and powerful agents of decomposition, 
but they have served as a connecting link between the two branches of chemical science. 
A system of classification of elements is now coming into use, in which the heavy metals 
arrange themselves harmoniously with the elements of organic bodies, and in accordance 
w r ith the principles which were discovered by a study of organic compounds. It is now 
many years since the attention of chemists was directed by a French professor to some 
inconsistencies which had crept into our system of atomic weights. Gerhardt showed 
that the principles which were adopted in fixing the atomic weight of elementary bodies 
generally required us to adopt for oxygen, carbon, and sulphur, numbers twice as great 
as those generally in use for those elements. The logic of his arguments was unanswer¬ 
able, and yet Gerhardt’s conclusions gained but few adherents. It is to be observed, that 
for some years Gerhardt represented chemical reactions by so-called synoptic formulae, 
which took no account of the existence of organic radicals. These synoptic formulae 
represent in the simplest terms the result of a chemical reaction; but they give no phy¬ 
sical image of the progress by which the reaction is brought about. The introduction, 
in this country, of the water type in connection with polyatomic as well as monatomic 
radicals, was found to satisfy the requirements of the synoptic formula?. Gerhardt was 
