udied pedagogical psychology he would have been informed
that nothing chills the ardor of the adolescent mind like being set at
tasks too great for its powers. If he had heard this and believed it, he
would not have allowed Perkin to spend two years in fruitless endeavors
to isolate phenanthrene from coal tar and to prepare artificial
quinine--and in that case Perkin would never have discovered the aniline
dyes. But Perkin, so far from being discouraged, set up a private
laboratory so he could work over-time. While working here during the
Easter vacation of 1856--the date is as well worth remembering as
1066--he was oxidizing some aniline oil when he got what chemists most
detest, a black, tarry mass instead of nice, clean crystals. When he
went to wash this out with alcohol he was surprised to find that it gave
a beautiful purple solution. This was "mauve," the first of the aniline
dyes.

The funny thing about it was that when Perkin tried to repeat the
experiment with purer aniline he could not get his color. It was because
he was working with impure chemicals, with aniline containing a little
toluidine, that he discovered mauve. It was, as I said, a lucky
accident. But it was not accidental that the accident happened to the
young fellow who spent his noonings and vacations at the study of
chemistry. A man may not find what he is looking for, but he never
finds anything unless he is looking for something.

Mauve was a product of creative chemistry, for it was a substance that
had never existed before. Perkin's next great triumph, ten years later,
was in rivaling Nature in the manufacture of one of her own choice
products. This is alizarin, the coloring matter contained in the madder
root. It was an ancient and oriental dyestuff, known as "Turkey red" or
by its Arabic name of "alizari." When madder was introduced into France
it became a profitable crop and at one time half a million tons a year
were raised. A couple of French chemists, Robiquet and Colin, extracted
from madder its active principle, alizarin, in 1828, but it was not
until forty years later that it was discovered that alizarin had for its
base one of the coal-tar products, anthracene. Then came a neck-and-neck
race between Perkin and his German rivals to see which could discover a
cheap process for making alizarin from anthracene. The German chemists
beat him to the patent office by one day! Graebe and Liebermann filed
their application for a patent on