56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



eluding the celebrated one on lithic acid, and two with the celebrated 

 French chemist Dumas. In that year the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, at their Liverpool meeting, made a request 

 to him to write a report on the then state of knowledge of organic 

 chemistry. It was this report which originated the work which he 

 published in 1840, namely, the work entitled " Organic Chemistry in 

 its Application to Agriculture and Physiology." In 1838 he pub- 

 lished a memoir on the state of chemistry in Austria, in which he ex- 

 hibited its shortcomings in trenchant language, and the effect upon 

 the Austrian Government was such as no one would have expected. 

 In reply to his essay he received the offer of a chair at Vienna. 

 " Come to us," they said, " reform our chemistry, and we will give 

 you a chair." But the conditions were not sufficient, and the Aus- 

 trian Government, having received Liebig's refusal to go to Vienna, 

 at their own expense sent a number of young chemists to Giessen, 

 there to study chemistry under Liebig, and to prepare themselves for 

 the important function of becoming teachers of the new chemistry in 

 Austria. In the year 1840 he published the work which I have already 

 mentioned, and he also published a memoir on the state of chemistry 

 in Prussia. You know what was the state of Prussia in 1840; the 

 promises made by the king in the year 1813, regarding a liberal con- 

 stitution, had all been falsified, a narrow-minded bureaucracy gov- 

 erned everything, a minister of education who did not comprehend 

 his time could not understand that physical science required any pro- 

 motion, or any state help. He soon went into that movement which 

 has been described as 3fucJcerthum, a kind of pietism which shows itself 

 by casting up the eyes in a praying attitude, having God more on the 

 tongue than in the heart ; by a mock-modest morality which would, 

 for example, have caused the council of this institution to have those 

 beautiful nymphs on our walls painted over with drapery. Under 

 these circumstances no science could progress, and there was not in 

 the whole of Prussia a single establishment, laboratory, or teaching- 

 room where a man could learn practical or even theoretical chemistry. 

 It was the great boast of even talented teachers of chemistry, that all 

 the apparatus they required for teaching was a dozen test-tubes. 

 This attack on the state of chemistry in Prussia had no effect what- 

 ever of a good kind, but, on the contrary, the bureaucracy used its 

 power and influence to prevent the Prussian youth from visiting the 

 University of Giessen, and I have the authority of Kolbe that for a 

 time the visiting this university was actually forbidden to young 

 Prussians. 



About this period Liebig purchased from the municipality of 

 Giessen a sand-pit, at a place called Trieb, on a little height east of 

 the town, and there he made experiments on vegetable physiology. 

 This place bears the name of "Liebig's Height" to the present day, 

 and I dare say it will bear it for many years to come. He also pub- 



