Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/553

Rh the diverse matters grouped under the term chemical engineering. Of this very practical branch of chemical science, as well as of the valuable additions to materia medica, of the improved methods introduced into analytical chemistry, and of the contributions to the chemistry of agriculture, no mention can be attempted.

The tendency of modern researches in chemistry is to magnify the atomic theory; the rapid accumulation of facts, the ever-increasing ingenious hypotheses, the most searching examinations of co-ordinate laws, all tend to strengthen the Daltonian adaptation of the philosophic Greeks. Here and there a voice is raised against the slavish worship of picturesque formulae; but, against the molecular theory underlying the symbolic system so depicted, few earnest arguments are advanced. The whole aim of organic chemistry is directed to the discovery of the arrangement of atoms within the molecule, and the success Obtained justifies the hypothesis. The edifice erected through these achievements, though young in years, is too substantial to tolerate displacement of its corner-stone. The absolute truth of the atomic theory is beyond man's power to establish; even admitting that it necessitates absurd assumptions, it is, nevertheless, indisputably the "best existing explanation of the facts of chemistry as at present known."

A noteworthy feature of existing chemical research is the recognition of the necessity of a more intimate knowledge of the connection between physical characters and chemical constitution. In the past chemists increased the number of new compounds so rapidly that they often neglected detailed examination of their physical properties, their relations to known bodies and to each other, preferring to satisfy their ambition by fresh discoveries. This race after new bodies still continues, but parallel with it are zealous investigators striving after a knowledge of the innate qualities and bearings of these same bodies; and the latter class of students is gaining prizes no less valuable than those secured by the former.

Chemists are also recognizing the necessity of a more minute study of the simpler phenomena of chemistry, and it is in this direction that they look for many laurels in the future. Priestley's day of great discoveries by the simplest means has in one sense passed; the opportunities for isolating nine new gases, or of recognizing by chemical tests half a dozen new elementary bodies, in the space of a lifetime, are gone; only by the employment of the most delicate appliances, by the closest scrutiny of phenomena and the conditions governing them, by availing themselves of all the resources of physics, by an unshrinking expenditure of time and of money, to say nothing of the necessity of trained mental powers of no low order and of skilled hands, shall chemists in succeeding generations realize their ambitious designs.