48 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



increasing number of students, however, made it 

 necessary to enclose the cloisters with glass windows, 

 in front of which a series of working benches were 

 arranged. One of these was given to me, and on 

 one side worked Lothar Meyer, and on the other side 

 Pauli, whilst Russell and Hermann, and Atkinson and 

 Meidinger, occupied neighbouring places. Of course 

 we had neither water nor gas laid on. We used 

 Berzelius spirit-lamps, drew our water from the pump, 

 and threw down our useless precipitates on the tomb- 

 stones of the old monks under our feet ; all our 

 combustions were of course made with charcoal, and 

 the evaporation of the wash-waters of our analyses 

 was carried out over charcoal fires. 



Bunsen soon set me at quantitative work, and I 

 first learnt from him what accuracy of manipulation 

 meant. His system of silicate analysis was carried 

 on by almost all the men (each analysis occupying 

 six weeks), and he used the results for verifying the 

 law with regard to the acid and basic silicates, which 

 he first brought forward in his celebrated memoirs 

 on the composition of Icelandic rocks. As soon as 

 I had obtained the requisite amount of facility for 

 work of this kind, he put me through a complete 

 course of gas analysis, for which he was specially 

 celebrated, and thus I learnt a number of manipulative 

 details as well as exact methods of measuring and 

 estimating gas volumes. 



Having in these and other ways put me on my 

 mettle, and having thus gained confidence in my 

 powers of accurate and trustworthy manipulation, the 

 Master set me on to original work. The outcome 

 of these, my early flights into unknown regions, were 

 not of striking import, but they served as an introduc- 

 tion to better things to come. 



