Sir Humphry Davy, 3 



descriptions, and for angling, an art which is so intimately 

 allied to the wild scenery of nature. He quitted school in 

 December, 1793, at the age of 15, and returned from Truro 

 to Penzance ; here he took up his abode with Mr. John 

 Tomkin, Surgeon, who had defrayed his expenses during 

 his twelve months, residence at Truro. In the subsequent 

 year his time was occupied according as inclination dictated, 

 in fishing, shooting, swimming, and in solitary rambles. 



His father dying in 1794, produced an alteration in his 

 employment, and in 1795, he was apprenticed to Mr. Bing- 

 ham Borlase, a surgeon and apothecary, in Penzance. At 

 this period, he began to register carefully inferences from 

 the information acquired during his reading, and some ex- 

 tracts from his note books, exhibit the nature of the studies 

 which interested him most. Extracts given in his brother's 

 life of him, exhibit his idea of a plan of study. In con- 

 sonance with the results of his after life, we find that he 

 places mathematics at the end of the course ; a plan which 

 has since been advocated by others. To say the least of it, 

 however, it is one which strikes at the root of concise- 

 ness and precision, for nothing can contribute more to these 

 desirable, nay, indispensable objects in science than a sub- 

 stantial mathematical ground-work. The absence of this 

 is obvious in many parts of Davy's scientific writings, and 

 renders his meaning sometimes very ambiguous. It would 

 be an easy task to point out faults, from a similar defect 

 in the writings of all those who have not been reared in the 

 mathematical school. He did not begin to study the ma- 

 thematics till 1796, when in his 18th year. But his more 

 favourite study was metaphysics occasionally intermixed 

 with poetical sallies. In 1797, he engaged in natural phi- 

 losophy, and principally as with his other studies under his 

 own tuition. 



In November or Decepaber, when just entering upon his 

 19th year, he turned his attention to chemistry. This was 

 an important period of his life. Like most of his great pre- 

 decessors his apparatus was of the most simple nature. 

 His bed-room constituted his laboratory ; some phials, wine 

 glasses, a few tea-cups, tobacco-pipes and earthen crucibles, 

 his instruments. That this was the line in which he was 

 destined afterwards to shine was soon apparent ; for in the 



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