26 JOURNAIv OF THE 



and his blinding himself with his microscopic investi- 

 g-ation of infusorial earths; of (ralileo and his tele- 

 scope. M}^ acquaintance lies mostly, however, with 

 chemists, and I shall draw^ from among them the ex- 

 amples we need. 



Some 3^ears ago Dr. Kerr, our former State (rcolo- 

 gist, supplied a distinguished English chemist. Dr. 

 Crookes, wnth a large amount of a rare mineral, sam- 

 arskite, found in this State. Years were spent by this 

 gentleman in, w^hat he speaks of as the most trying and 

 laborious of w^ork, fractional precipitations, in order 

 to separate the rare elements contained in the mineral. 

 This meant a repetition for many hundreds of times 

 of the same delicate and trying operations. The final 

 report of the w^ork occupied only a few^ pages and gave 

 to the uninitiated little sign of the labor spent upon it. 



Another instance of the same sort of w^ork came to 

 my notice a few years ago. Dr. Shapleigh, an ambi- 

 tious American chemist, w^rote me that he too had been 

 working on the rare earths (from cerite and monazite 

 also gotten from this State) trying to separate praseo- 

 and neo-dymium and to prepare their compounds, wath 

 the hope of thoroughly studying them. After three 

 years of daily toil and over 4(J0 precipitations from 8 

 or 10 tons of materials, he had them separated and the 

 compounds prepared and then found himself unable to 

 continue the work and earn the reputation w^hich he 

 so richly merited. 



A German' chemist washing to find out some of the 

 constituents of the sugar-beet w^orked over six thous- 

 and pounds of them in small portions, by prolonged 

 and patient operations. 



We have some remarkable instances of patient toil 

 among the (jlder chemists also. Thus Boerhaave dis- 



