LABORATORIES FOR GENERAL TEACHING 45 



students, are accommodated. At first it was intended to provide 

 separate rooms for qualitative and quantitative work, but the 

 advantage to the students of being associated with various kinds 

 of work going on simultaneously, and the greater facility in 

 superintendence and instruction led to the decision to throw the 

 two rooms into one. 



The view of the main laboratory (Fig. 21, facing p. 46) shows 

 that it is a cheerful and well-lighted apartment, the working 

 benches being provided with the usual supplies of gas, water, and 

 reagent bottles, together with a very convenient small glass 

 chamber for carrying off surplus sulphuretted hydrogen which is 

 brought to each bench from a gas-holder out of doors. These 

 glass chambers are connected with a draught flue, and are suffi- 

 ciently large to allow sufficient space for boiling or evaporation of 

 liquids which give off noxious vapours. Each student has a table 

 space of 5 feet from side to side, and the tables provide for four 

 students to whom. the glass fume chamber in the middle is common. 



The principal lecture room is 34 feet by 47 feet and is 22 feet 

 high in the central part. The seating is arranged for 180 

 students, but if necessary a larger number can be accom- 

 modated. The principal entrance is from the corridor, but 

 in case it should be necessary to empty the room quickly, a 

 door on the opposite side leads directly into the open air. The 

 lecture table is furnished with the usual appliances for demonstra- 

 tion, and the windows are fitted with convenient black blinds 

 by which the room can be rendered dark when necessary. 



The plan shows that in arranging the space the requirements 

 of research have not been forgotten and special rooms are pro- 

 vided for balances, spectroscopic and polariscopic work, as well 

 as for microscopes, which of late years have come more and 

 more into use in connection with the examination of metals. 



The assay laboratory, of which a view is given (Fig. 22, facing 

 p. 46), is a lofty room with 40 feet by 54 feet floor space, con- 

 taining twenty fusion furnaces and twelve muffles arranged down 

 the middle of the room. The flues are carried beneath the floor 

 to a central stack which appears in the view given of the ex- 

 terior. There are twelve fusion furnaces and four muffles, in 

 addition, in another room in the main building. The working 

 benches are fitted with drawers, draught cupboards, gas, water, 

 and exhaust pumps nearly like those in the chemical laboratory. 



A feature in the assay laboratory, as in the chemical laboratory, 



