ry in the future. The address is interesting in more respects
than one. Prof. Berthelot sketched the probable state of chemistry at
about the year 2000. While his sketch contains many a droll
exaggeration, it does contain so much that is serious and sound that we
shall present it in extract. After describing the achievements of
chemistry during the last few decades, Prof. Berthelot went on to say:--

"The manufacture of sulphuric acids and of soda, bleaching and coloring,
beet sugar, therapeutic alkaloids, gas, gilding and silvering, etc.;
then came electro-chemistry, whereby metallurgy was radically
revolutionized; thermo-chemistry and the chemistry of explosives,
whereby fresh energy was imparted to mining and to war; the wonders of
organic chemistry in the production of colors, of flavors, of
therapeutic and antiseptic means, etc. But all that is only a start:
soon much more important problems are to be solved. About the year 2000
there will be no more agriculture and no more farmers: chemistry will
have done away with the former cultivation of the soil. There will be no
more coal-shafts, consequently, neither will there be any more miners'
strikes. Fuel is produced by chemical and physical processes. Tariffs
and wars are abolished: aerial navigation, that helped itself to
chemicals as motor power, pronounced the sentence of death upon those
obsolete habits. The whole problem of industry then consists in
discovering sources of power, that are inexhaustible and resortable to
with little labor. Until now we have produced steam through the chemical
energy of burning mineral coal. But mineral coal is hard to get and its
supply decreases daily. Attention must be turned towards utilizing the
heat of the sun and of the earth's crust. The hope is justified that
both sources will be drawn upon without limit. The boring of a shaft
3,000 to 4,000 meters deep does not exceed the power of modern, less yet
it will exceed that of future engineers. The source of all heat and of
all industry would be thus thrown open. Add water to that, and all
imaginable machinery may be put in perpetual operation on earth: the
source of this power would experience hardly any diminution in hundreds
of years.

"With the aid of the earth's heat, numerous chemical problems will
become solvable, among these the greatest of all--_the chemical
production of food_. In principle, the problem is solved now. The
synthesis of fats and oils has been long known