SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
would take up the job of fighting the huge combine that existed in 
Germany without the persons who were doing it catching it. One 
attack which made him very indignant was a suggestion of watered 
capital, and that there was an inflation of values and the ordinary abuse 
of the Stock Exchange with regard to it. It was utterly unjustifiable, 
and absolutely untrue, to suggest that there was anything like watered 
capital in the company. Dealing with complaints by users that they 
could not get the quantities they received before the war, he said it was 
impossible for a company so young at once to give a full range in such 
quantities as might be demanded. Increase in range was not the solu- 
tion, because they could give a very large range indeed in quantities 
insufficient for the industry. They had to aim at satisfying in quantity 
as well as in the nature of the demand, and they were doing that as fast 
as they could. They produced’more indigo now than England could 
consume, whereas, at one time, users were standing in queues for indigo. 
It seemed to him that no one was held up so that his works could not do 
their full amount. He was only held up in the sense that he would 
rather be making other things than those he happened to be making. 
“When I spoke to you last,’ said Lord Moulton, in concluding, 
“England produced only one-tenth of the dyes you wanted, and I am 
informed that by the end of this year we shall be able to turn out within 
one-fifth of the amount that England used before the war. ‘The tables 
are turned. The margin that you want imported is a small part; that 
_which we make is the bigger. _ That is not a bad account of work done 
under the paralyzing influences of war, and the almost equally paralyzing 
influences of the last few months.” 
SYNTHETIC AMMONIA : NEW FRENCH PROCESS. 
_ Professor D’Arsonyal, according to a Times correspondent, made an 
tnportant communication, in the name of M. Georges Claude, to the 
Academy of Science, Paris. M. Claude recently showed that, contrary 
to the generally received theory, it was not only possible but strikingly 
easy to produce and turn to industrial uses pressures of 1,000 atmo- 
spheres and more. M. Claude has now succeeded in applying these very 
high pressures to the synthetic production of ammonia. Hitherto this 
has been done and applied only in Germany. M. Claude, however, has 
far outdistanced the German chemists. Under the new conditions dis- 
covered by him the combination of hydrogen and nitrogen takes place 
with such intensity that a very small apparatus is capable of a consider- 
able output. M. Claude proposes shortly to exhibit to the members of 
the Academy a tiny apparatus, in regular working order, capable of 
producing daily 200 litres (44 gallons) of liquid ammonia. Whereas the 
German chemist Haber only obtains one-third of a gramme of ammonia 
per catalytic gramme, M. Claude obtains ten grammes. : 
vé 
RESEARCH ON PETROLEUM PROBLEMS. 
Arrangements have been made by the American Petroleum Institute 
for the organization of a Division of Research and Statistics.’ The 
amount to be expended is placed at about £100,000 annually, which the 
industry can well afford, as this sum is only one-fiftieth. of 1 per cent. of 
the value of the 1918 output of crude oil and refined products in the 
Lee 
