92 Biographical Account of [Aue. 
In the year 1813, a vacancy happening in the Chemical Professor- 
ship at Cambridge, he was urged by some of his friends resident in 
the University to become a candidate for that appointment. He 
was induced to accede to their solicitations, principally trom think- 
ing that the duty of delivering an annual course of lectures would 
furnish him with a motive of useful and honourable exertion. Fer 
a short time after he had declared himself, some opposition was 
apprehended on the part of a very respectable candidate resident in 
the University ; and during this period the exertions which were 
mide by Mr, Tennant’s friends, and the assurances of support 
which he received, greatly exceeded what had ever been known on 
any similar occasion. The opposition being withdrawn, he was 
elected Professor in May, 1813. 
During the months of April and May in the following year he 
delivered his first and only course of academical lectures, which was 
attended by a very numerous class of students. ‘The greater part of 
these lectures were spoken from notes containing the order of the 
subjects, and the principal heads of discussion. But the intro- 
ductory lecture was written at length, and still remains in manu- 
script. lt presents a rapid and masterly outline of the history of 
chemistry, interspersed with many original and striking remarks on 
the nature of the science itself, on its extensive application, and 
prodigious effects in promoting the civilization of mankind, and 
on the merits and discoveries of some of its most distinguished 
professors i in different ages and countries. 
The impression made by these lectures will not soon be forgotten 
in the University ; and it is impossible, without the greatest regret, 
to consider the effects which a continuance of these labours during 
a series of years might have produced, not only in advancing che- 
mical knowledge, but in diffusing a general love of philosophical 
research, and in promoting enlightened and comprehensive views 
on all the various subjects with which that science is more or less. 
immediately connected, 
In June, 1814, his two last communications were read to the 
Royal Society : the one upon an easier mode of procuring potas- 
sium than that which is in common use; and the other on the 
means of procuring a double distillation by the same heat, which 
has been more than once alluded to in the course of this memoir. 
The great variety of chemical subjects on which Mr, Tennant had 
been at different times engaged, but upon which his experiments 
were left incomplete, or insufficiently recorded, has been already 
mentioned. <A brief notice of some of the most important facts 
which he ascertained, and of the principal series of experiments to 
which his attention was directed, would form an interesting part of 
the present memoir; but this, owing to various causes, and espe- 
cially to the state of his papers, cannot as yet be attempted. 
Among the insulated facts, one of the latest was the making sugar 
from starch with oxalic acid, in the same manner as it had been 
made by M. Kirchoff with oil of vitriol ; and the last chemical ins 
