GERMANY AND ENGLAND.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1417, 27 April 1899, Page 2

GERMANY AND ENGLAND.

THEIR METHODS COMPARED

REMARKS BY PROFESSOR EASTERFIELD.

German chemists, for their work in university laboratories and factory laboratories, were warmly commended by Professor Easterfield, of the Victoria University College, in his address at the Girls' High School on Tuesday evening. He made appreciative reference to Liebig; who introduced the methods of Berselius, of Stockholm, into the University of Giessen. The mass of new facts accumulated under Liebig in the Giessen laboratory formed the basis upon which all subsequent discoveries in organic chemistry had been founded. From this mass of new facts it was possible for the master minds of Liebig and Wohler to develop the theory and philosophy of chemistry. Liebig's laboratory supplied for many years the young professors for the chairs of chemistry which were rapidly founded in the other universities of Germany j and Liebig's methods had altered the entire curriculum of these universities. At the present day they found that the Prussian Government was always willing to listen to any appeal for a new university or laboratory, and the last fifteen years had seen new and costly laboratories erected on the most favourable sites in some twenty of the German university towns. Germany was at the present day the home of scientific research, and it was to Liebig's influence that this spirit of investigation was to be attributed. It was the German university system rather than the suitability of the German student which had produced the described result. In favour of this view he would mention that the English student at a German university was generally more able than the German student, and as such was frequently entrusted by the professor with the highest class of investigation. With very few exceptions, those English chemists who were turning out work of the highest class, had acquired their habits of scientific inquiry in the university laboratories of Germany, or under German masters. It was thus evident that research was regarded in Germany as the highest function of the university teaching. That this was so was apparent from the manner in which the professors were chosen, and in the provision made for their research work. Defiling with the substantial benefit conferred upon a country by chemical research, Professor Easterfield said we lived in an agricultural colony, which, notwithstanding the large supply of homemade fertilisers, found it necessary to import £IOO,OOO worth of artificial manures. The application of artificial manures was the direct outcome of Liebig's researches from 1830 to 1840 upon the composition of plants. The agriculturalist had benefited enormously by those researches. Had he realised the extent to which research might still further benefit him? Again, Davy, in 1825, discovered benzine amongst the products of distillation of coal. Practically, the development of the coal tar colour industry was based upon this discovery, and the development of it in the hands of Hofmann, Perkin, Mansfield, Griess, Nicholson and others. It was an unfortunate fact that in the refined chemical trade Germany had cut England out of the market. The reason which was usually assigned for Germany's success, and he believed correctly assigned, was that in German factories research was valued; in the English factories research was at a discount. Many German factories petted their staff of research chemists, recognising that it was to the labours of these men that all future developments must be due. In an English chemical works the staff was usually undermanned with chemists, who were expected to do routine work most of the day, and carry on researches if they had time. He would particularly mention amongst German works the firm of the Badische Amlin and Soda Fabrik, which now employed over 100 trained research chemists, and which was, in consequence, able to put more patents on the market than any other firm of chemical manufacturers in the world, whilst its dividend was most satisfactory to the shareholders. The British manufacturer had frequently stated to him (Professor Easterfield) that he could not understand how it could possibly pay financially to keep a large staff of research chemists, or of thinkers generally in any commercial establishment. "I am willing," said he, "to take advantage of researches when they are finished, but 1 shall not pay for them until I see my way to making money out of them." To his (the professor's) mind, this was unsound commercial policy, and the British manufacturer was learning to his cost that German methods might have their advnatages after all. In other branches of trade the thinker was appreciated in Germany, for in the German curtain factories tlie proportion of designers to operatives was from four to eight times as great as in England. In the German machine shops the number of draughtsmen was similarly large in proportion to the number of labourers ; and in the universities there was, upon an average, one teacher to every eleven students, whilst in England the proportion was about one teacher to thirty students. »