rubber
surrogate for water-proofing cloth. When combined with heavier alkaline
bases it forms a tough and elastic substance that can be rolled into
transparent sheets like celluloid or turned into buttons and knife
handles.

In Australia when the war shut off the supply of tin the Government
commission appointed to devise means of preserving fruits recommended
the use of cardboard containers varnished with "magramite." This is a
name the Australians coined for synthetic resin made from phenol and
formaldehyde like bakelite. Magramite dissolved in alcohol is painted on
the cardboard cans and when these are stoved the coating becomes
insoluble.

Tarasoff has made a series of condensation products from phenol and
formaldehyde with the addition of sulfonated oils. These are formed by
the action of sulfuric acid on coconut, castor, cottonseed or mineral
oils. The products of this combination are white plastics, opaque,
insoluble and infusible.

Since I am here chiefly concerned with "Creative Chemistry," that is,
with the art of making substances not found in nature, I have not spoken
of shellac, asphaltum, rosin, ozocerite and the innumerable gums, resins
and waxes, animal, mineral and vegetable, that are used either by
themselves or in combination with the synthetics. What particular "dope"
or "mud" is used to coat a canvas or form a telephone receiver is often
hard to find out. The manufacturer finds secrecy safer than the patent
office and the chemist of a rival establishment is apt to be baffled in
his attempt to analyze and imitate. But we of the outside world are not
concerned with this, though we are interested in the manifold
applications of these new materials.

There seems to be no limit to these compounds and every week the
journals report new processes and patents. But we must not allow the new
ones to crowd out the remembrance of the oldest and most famous of the
synthetic plasters, hard rubber, to which a separate chapter must be
devoted.

VIII

THE RACE FOR RUBBER

There is one law that regulates all animate and inanimate things. It is
formulated in various ways, for instance:

Running down a hill is easy. In Latin it reads, _facilis descensus
Averni._ Herbert Spencer calls it the dissolution of definite coherent
heterogeneity into indefinite incoherent homogeneity. Mother Goose
expresses it in the fable of Humpty Dumpty, and the business man
extracts the moral as, "You can't unscramble a