636 BUNSEN MEMORIAL LECTURE. 



tates, so as to save time and labor, or with another working out a cali- 

 bration table of a eudiometer, or with a third pointing- out that the 

 ordinary method of .separating iron from ahuninum is unsatisfactory 

 and carrying out a more perfect process before his eyes. Often you 

 would find him seated at the table blowpipe — the flame in those days 

 wa.s fed with oil — making some new piece of glass apparatus, for he 

 was an expert glass blower, and enjoyed showing the men how to seal 

 platinum wires into the eudiometers, or to bloM' bulb tubes for his 

 iodomctric anah'ses. Maxwell Simpson, who worked with Bunsen in 

 the fifties, tells me that one day "he saw Bunsen blow a complicated 

 piece of glass apparatus for a pupil, who (piickly broke it; Bunsen 

 then made him a second, which at once met with a similar fat(>; with- 

 out a muiinui- Bunsen again sat down to the blowpipe and for the 

 third time presented the student (who we will trust looked ashamed of 

 himself) with the perfect apparatus. Then he would spend half the 

 morning in the gas-:uialy>is room, going through ;ill the detailed 

 manipulation of the exact measurement of gaseous \<)luines, and show- 

 ing a couple of men how to estimate the various constituents of a 

 sam])le of coal gas. :ind pointing out the methods of calculating the 

 results, and then leaving them to repeat the processes from beginning 

 to end for themselves. 



His manii)ulati\'e ability was remarkable; his hands, though large 

 and })owerful, wei'e supple and dexterous. He was annisingly ])r<)ud 

 of Inning a large thumb, b}- means of which he was able to close the 

 open end of a long eudiometer filled with mercur}' and immerse it in 

 the mercui-y l)ath without admitting the least bubble of air. a feat 

 which those endowed with smaller digits were unable to accomplish. 

 Then he had a very salamanderlike power of handling hot glass tubes, 

 and often at iho ))lowpipe hav(> I snudt burnt Bunsen. and seen his 

 fingers smoke I Then he would quickly reduce their temperature l)}^ 

 pressing the lobe of his right ear between his heated thumb and fore- 

 finger, turning his head to one with a smile as the "agony abated," 

 while it used to be a joke among the students that the master never 

 needed a pincette to take off the lid from a hot porcelain crucible. 



Accuracy of work was the first essential with him; luostof us learned 

 for the first time what this meant. Six weeks' work was spent on a 

 single silicate analysis, but most of us contrived to keep two such 

 analyses going at once, while an analysis of coal gas occupied a week 

 or ten days. Not that he was averse to quick processes; indeed, many 

 of his own investigations contain novel proposals for shortening chem- 

 ical methods, but this was never done at the expense of accuracy. 



After having learned his methods of quantitative work, of silicate 

 analysis, for example, and after having gone through a course of gas 

 anah'sis, those of us who had alread}' been more or less trained else- 

 where were set upon some original investigation. Lothar Meyer, who 



