Culture and Chemistry

Abstract

CRITICISM is an art to which Prof. H. E. Armstrong, as is well known, has given some attention. The opportunity occurring on the occasion of his lecture before the Royal Society of Arts on “Marcelin Berthelot and Synthetic Chemistry”—a full report appears in the Journal of the Society of Dec. 30—for the exercise of that faculty, was employed, in the main, in a manner such as cannot fail to arouse appreciation. As Sir William Pope, who opened the subsequent discussion, remarked, it would have been an easy enough task merely to give an account of Berthelot's life and of his manifold scientific activities, but to present a picture which should indicate how that work fitted in with the great scheme of progress and led to the present situation was an entirely different matter. That such a picture should be presented by one who has lived through that great epoch and has himself taken part in many of the big movements to which he necessarily referred, invested the discourse with a special degree of importance.