CHEMISTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 
BY 
F. W. Clarke. 
THE ANNUAL PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 
DELIVERED 
December 12 , 1896 . 
In the history of science, from whatever point of view we 
may consider it, the several branches develop according to a 
natural order. The more obvious things attract attention 
first, the less obvious are recognized later. Plants, animals, 
stones, and stars are studied even by savages, but the hidden 
forces of nature, governed by laws which can be utilized for 
man’s benefit, escape discovery until civilization is far ad¬ 
vanced, and even then are revealed but slowly. At first 
each department of knowledge is purely empirical, a mass of 
facts without philosophical connection; but sooner or later 
speculation begins, the scattered evidence is generalized, and 
an organized science is born. The study of concrete facts, 
the recognition of our surroundings, precedes the study of 
relations. 
Among the sciences chemistry is one of the youngest. As 
an organized branch of systematic knowledge it has little' 
more than completed its first century. Before the time of 
Robert Boyle it was hardly better than empiricism. At first 
a few scattered facts were recognized, involving transforma¬ 
tions of matter. Some of these were applied in the arts, as 
in metallurgy and in medicine, and their generalization led 
simply and naturally into alchemy, with its search for the 
26-Bull. Phil. Soe., Wash., Vol. 13. 
(183) 
