1908] on Davy's Discovery of the 3IetaU of the Alkalis. 5 



impression it made on the world of science was the action of the 

 French Institute. Bonaparte, then First Consul, had announced his 

 intention of founding a medal " for the best experiment which should 

 be made in the course of each year on the galvanic fluid," and a 

 committee of the Institute, consisting of Laplace, Halle, Coulomb, 

 Hauj, and Biot, was appointed to consider the best means of giving 

 effect to the wishes of the First Consul. To the young man, with 

 the little brown head, like a boy (as Lady Brownrigg described him), 

 now 28 years of age, was awarded the medal. All the Institute got 

 from the founder of the medal was, what Maria Edgeworth termed, 

 " a rating all round in imperial BiUingsgate." There was no entente 

 cordiale in those days ; indeed, the feehng of animosity was intense. 

 Of course, there were persons who said that patriotism should forbid 

 the acceptance of the award. Davy's own view was more sensible and 

 politic : " Some people," he said to his friend Poole, " say I ought not 

 to accept this prize ; and there have been foolish paragraphs in the 

 papers to that effect ; but if the two countries or governments are at 

 war, the men of science are not. That would, indeed, be a civil 

 war of the worst description ; we should rather, through the instru- 

 mentality of men of science, soften the asperities of national hostility." 



Thanks to the kindness of Dr. Humphry Davy Rolleston, the 

 grandson of Dr. John Davy, the brother of Su- Humphry, who has 

 also been so good as to lend me this admirable bust of the great 

 chemist by Chantrey, and this charming portrait by Jackson, I am 

 able to show you this evening this historically interesting medal. 



What Davy looked like at this period of his life may be seen from 

 the picture I now project upon the screen. It is a reproduction 

 of the large portrait which hangs in the vestibule, and which the 

 Institution owes to the thoughtful kindness of the late Mr. Graham 

 Young. 



As the applications of voltaic electricity seemed in 1806 to have 

 no immediate bearing on the comforts and conveniences of life, 

 Davy, during the greater part of the following year, was required to 

 direct his attention to other matters. But in the late summer of 

 1807 he was able to resume his work with the voltaic battery, and he 

 commenced to study its action on the alkalis. 



That the alkalis— potash and soda — would turn out to be com- 

 pound substances was not an unfamiliar idea at the time, and it is 

 signiticant that almost immediately after Nicholson and Carlisle had 

 resolved water into its elements by the action of voltaic electricity, 

 Henry, of Manchester, the friend and collaborator of Dalton, should 

 have made the attempt to apply the same agency to the separation of 

 the presumed metallic principle of potash. The conception that what 

 the older chemists called " earths " might be made to yield metals 

 was at least as old as the time of Boyle, and probably dates back 

 from the earliest days of alchemy. The relation of the earths to the 

 metals was part of the doctrine of Becher and Stahl : it was no less a 



