68 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IV, 



" Mr. Graham is an excellent teacher ; so well versed in 

 his subject, and so earnest in displaying it aright, and in 

 impressing it on his audience, that the hour of lecture 

 speeds very rapidly away. I cannot make intelligible to 

 any of my non-chemical friends the nature of the inquiries 

 he is pursuing, except perhaps by saying, that he is prosecu- 

 ting the study of the ' Laws of Combination ' between dif- 

 ferent substances. 



"Another assistant, as well as I, is working at his subjects : 

 the other pupils, four in number, are labouring for their own 

 profit. We have at last succeeded in getting a corner apiece 

 in the Laboratory ; before this desirable arrangement was 

 accomplished, we were always in each other's way, and half 

 the analyses were ruined in their middle stages by the care- 

 lessness of some one else than the experimenter. It would 

 often have been amusing had it not been very provoking, to 

 return anticipating the progress your analyses had made, 

 and find your vessels, materials, ay, everything gone, some 

 other philosopher having found a use for your apparatus, 

 and not troubling himself to inquire whether the vessel and 

 its contents were precious or no. That is past, and it is 

 now death by law to meddle with anything on another's 

 table. Suffocation in the laughing gas is the method pro- 

 posed for the infliction of capital punishment." 



" February gth. 



"I am now very busy ; the class is only every second day, 

 but it includes thirty-four students; and so large a prac- 

 tical class involves a great deal of trouble. I work at it 

 every day from nine till five, and sometimes till six or seven ; 

 and I have sometimes had to spend my dinner hour in the 

 Laboratory. All analysis or personal improvement is at 

 an end .quite at an_end. My health and spirits are quite 



