VOL.3. No. 10
CO~~R~SPONDHNCE
1189
group of laboratories appertaining to the Railway's Minister does not work for the government only; it also constitutes a controlling service performing many tests for private manufactories. Furthermore, there are numerous official laboratories-Food Products Control; Fertilizer Control; Province and Town laboratories, etc., but generally these laboratories are less important and their supply of equipment is strictly limited to the kind of work in which they specialize. We will only mention the university laboratories. They are adapted to their exclusive purposes, and offer,generally, spacious and well-equipped places to students. On these points the new laboratories of the Brussels University are models of their kind. Having been erected since the war, they have all the improvements that could be wished, and their equipment will permit the pursuit of every study which chemical problems should necessitate. Industrial Laboratories.-There is some progress since the war; before that chemical manufactories, even big ones, had no laboratories. Manufacturing control was often camed on in an empiricalway. Lots of manufactories based their work on experience, leaving to chance improvements and inventions. During the last few years there has been a complete change of method. The laboratory is now the manufactory's help, not an isolated one asked occasionally for advice, but a real instrument of control; the laboratory now makes part of the manufactory. We cannot yet generalize this good result but there exist in Belgium some industrial laboratories which are quite remarkable and we propose in a following article to introduce our American brethren into them.
F. LAMBERMONT, BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Chemical Engineer, A . I. G
L'PRACTICALCHEMISTRY BY MICRO-METHODS" Thank you very much for the copy of the
JOURNAL OF
CHEMICAL
EDUCATION, which I found most interesting. I notice that in the article on p. 876' on "Practical Methods for Beginners," by H. A. J. Pieters, the author advocates the increasing use of micro-methods by which the laboratory can effect a substantial saving in money with consequently decreased fees for the students. It might interest the readers of your JOURNAL to know that there bas recently been issued a small book entitled "Practical 1 Tars JOUB.NAL, 3 (August, 1926.)
Chemistry by Micro-Methods" written by E. C. Grey and published by W. Heifers & Sons, Ltd. (Cambridge, England). In this book are detailed instructions for a number of fundamental elementary experiments and for qualitative and volumetric work. Grey has practised his methods with classes of 300 medical students a t the Egyptian University, Cairo. Perhaps the news that such a book is available might interest your readers.
VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE FOR FUTURE CHEMISTS Aptitude and placement tests of the sort indicated in Dr. Brautlecht's paper (THIS JOURNAL,3, 903 (1926)), should be adapted for secondary schools and used there long before the pupil is ready for college or technical school. The preparation of tests and job specifications which would pick out from the mass those who should be actively encouraged t o become chemists and chemical engineers is a worthy task for our Senate of Chemical Education. There is no organized vocational guidance in secondary schools as far as chemical education is concerned. Few of our leading chemists and chemical engineers had any impetus from their high-school teachers to become such. I recently talked with one who spent a year in business school after graduating from high school, a year in a bank, and another in the office of a lumber company before entering college. I n college his interests were for a time equally divided between chemistry and astronomy. Such a lack of guidance has no place in a well-ordered scheme of things. Similar tests are also needed for vocational schools in chemical communities to determine those who should be encouraged t o become analysts, operators, and minor foremen for the plants of the community. Employment officials should be encouraged to assist in this work, which affects boys who never intend to go to college or who quit and go to work before they reach the years in which high-school chemistry is cnstomarily given. The community must educate its future workmen. It cannot depend upon external sources for them. R. E. BOWMAN WIGMINOTON TRADESCEIOOL, WILMINOTON, DELAWARE
