AND SCHONBEIN 17 



anything relating to organic life " which he confessed to 

 himself in later years. 1 



It is quite typical, however, of Schonbein that this 

 paper of Berzelius' is preceded by a summary of a research 

 by Faraday 2 on the behaviour in vacuo of a crystal of 

 camphor, slightly cooled, as compared with that of 

 powdered camphor. 



Not long afterwards negotiations were entered into 

 with Schonbein, who had just returned to England, 

 through Dr. Engelhart, 3 who was then living in Paris and 

 had refused a call to Bale, and they resulted in Schonbein 

 arriving at Bale in November 1828, and taking over, in 

 the first instance only provisionally, the professorship of 

 Peter Merian. 4 



In 1835 and 1836 Schonbein delivered a course of 

 lectures before the Scientific Institute of Bale, 5 "which 

 for the most part treated of electro-chemical phenomena." 

 Among these his attention was particularly directed to 

 that behaviour of iron which he termed its passivity. A 

 summary of these communications appeared in Poggen- 

 dorff's Annalen, in the Bibliotheque Universelle and in 

 the Philosophical Magazine 6 : and it is thoroughly charac- 



1 Schonbein, Menschen und Dinge. Mittheilungen aus dem 

 Reisetagebuch eines Naturforschers. Stuttgart und Hamburg 

 (1855) p. 117. 



2 " On the existence of a limit to vaporization," Phil. Trans. 

 (1826) p. 484. 



3 Johann Friedrich Philipp Engelhart, Ph.D., professor of 

 chemistry at the District Agricultural and Industrial School at 

 Nuremberg, was born in 1797 at Wildenstein, near Crailsheim, 

 in Wurtemberg, and died at Nuremberg in 1837. 



4 Peter Merian, professor of physics and chemistry at Bale 

 from 1827 to 1835, born at Bale in 1795 and died in 1883. 



5 "Bericht uber die Verliandlungen der Naturforschenden 

 Gesellschaft," in Bale, from August 1835 to July 1836. Part 2. 

 Bale (1836) p. 71. 



6 Poggend. Annal, vol. xxxvii. pp. 390 and 590 ; vol. xxxviii. 



