342 EBEN NORTON HORSFORD. 



cling to their fees is remembered ; but Horsford, from honorable 

 though exaggerated scruples, refused to accept this favor, and returned 

 to America, without a degree it is true, but with his mind broadened 

 by contact with such different surroundings and intercourse with men 

 of the first intellectual ability, his chemical knowledge pushed even 

 to organic chemistry, at that time the very frontier of the science, and 

 bearing as proofs of his acquisitions a paper on glycocoll and a strong 

 recommendation from Liebig. These at once caused his election, at 

 the instance of Professor Webster, to the " Rumford Professorship of 

 the Application of Science to the Useful Arts " in Harvard University, 

 and his first duty in this position was to organize the laboratory of 

 the newly founded Lawrence Scientific School after the plan of that 

 at Giessen. He addressed himself to this task with the energy which 

 was so large a part of his character ; the laboratory opened most 

 successfully, and flourished under his management for sixteen years, 

 during which time many chemists of distinction were educated there. 

 As a teacher he was remarkably clear and suggestive, and with his 

 sanguine, enthusiastic temperament was always urging his students 

 along the new lines of work which he had proposed to them. 



Among the papers published by him at this period of his life only 

 a few of the most striking can be mentioned. Such are an extended 

 research on the action of mercury on various metals, a theoretical 

 paper on the relation between the properties of the metals of the 

 alkaline earths and their atomic weights, and, more important than 

 these, some other discoveries, which are at the same time more char- 

 acteristic of the man because they were undertaken to benefit mankind 

 directly, rather than to throw light on the more abstruse portions of 

 the science. One of these was a paper on the action of water on 

 lead pipes, which contained some of the results of an exhaustive in- 

 vestigation into the best material for the water-pipes of Boston at the 

 time of the introduction of Cochituate water. This work occupied 

 him for many years, but, as he considered it a public service, he re- 

 fused the very ample compensation offered him by the city of Boston, 

 although at the time decidedly in need of money. The city accord- 

 ingly presented him with a handsome service of plate. The other 

 inventions of this class do not appear in the list of his scientific papers, 

 but include his most valuable work. Such are his fundamental im- 

 provements in the art of making cider, at that time a large industry 

 in New England, and the invention of condensed milk. The latter 

 he worked out for use in Dr. Kane's Arctic Expedition, and afterward 

 gave the process to one of his assistants named Hoffmann, who sold 



