CHEMICAL LABORATORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY. 169 



I have drawn many different plans to suit the various sites 

 which have from time to time been chosen, and although the last 

 selected site is not the best of them, it is very well adapted for 

 the purpose, and, morever, has the advantage of being near to the 

 physical, engineering and biological laboratories. This grouping 

 of the scientific work and lecture-rooms will be a great convenience 

 to the students, and j^revent much loss of time, in passing from 

 place to place. 



The plans placed before you are the preliminary ones, intended 

 for the use of the Colonial Architect in preparing working 

 drawings, hence they may undergo some slight modifications, but 

 no very material change is likely to be made. With the elevation 

 I have not concerned myself, except in so far as regards the 

 position of the windows and doors, since they haA'e to be arranged 

 in such a way as to suit the internal fittings, and the uses to 

 which the rooms are to be placed. 



The elevation is exceedingly plain, but as the money available 

 for the building is comparatively small, it has been necessary to 

 sacrifice external appearance. A far more pleasing and attractive 

 building could, of course, easily have been designed by the 

 arcliitect., but architectural eftects have had to give way to 

 economy. 



Particular attention has been paid to the fittings and small 

 details, since in a chemical laboratory much inconvenience and 

 loss of time is often entailed, by not paying sufiicient attention 

 to what might be considered as trifles. When absent on leave in 

 .1878, and during last year, I took the opportunity to visit many 

 of the principal European and American laboratories, as well as 

 those in Japan ; in this last there are some very good and well 

 arranged laboratories, especially the new one in Tokyo. The newer 

 English laboratories are equal to the best I saw in any country, 

 although not the largest ; but it is by no means an unmixed 

 advantage for a laboratory to be of great size. 



GENERAL PLANS. PLATE V. 



The building is a plain rectangular one of brick and cement. 

 All the principal accommodation for chemistry is on the 

 ground floor, tlie mineralogy and metallurgy rooms being in the 

 basement. 



The main laboratory is a room seventy-two by thirty-six feet, 

 with height of twenty -two feet in the central pai't. In this room 

 all, except the very junior (principally medical) and research 

 students, will be accommodated. At first it was intended to 

 have separate rooms for qualitative and quantitative work, but 

 the recollection of the advantages which I experienced myself 

 at the old College of Chemistry in London, from being amongst 

 students doing work of various kinds decided me to throw the 

 two rooms into one, and, moreover, this arrangement has the 



