in " HEIDELBERG DU FEINE " 51 



ment or to edit a research. And then much original 

 work was done in his vacations. 



Before his appointment Bunsen had stipulated with 

 the Government of the Grand- Duchy of Baden that 

 new laboratories should be built for him, and these 

 were shortly completed, and the old monastery pulled 

 down to make way for a new physical institute and a 

 zoological museum. 



Up to 1853 Heidelberg had not been supplied with 

 gas, and it was quite an event for the good Heidel- 

 bergers when the gas-lamps were first lighted in the 

 town. Of course, Bunsen at once saw the advantage 

 of having gas for heating purposes in the laboratory, 

 and I brought from London a sample of the gas-lamp 

 which we had been using in University College. 

 This consisted of an ordinary argand burner, above 

 which was a cylindrical copper chimney, and on the 

 top of this was fixed a disc of wire gauze. On turning 

 on the gas and applying a light to the top of the wire 

 gauze a non-luminous flame was obtained, which did 

 not, of course, blacken any object upon which it played. 

 As the admixture of air and gas in this arrangement 

 was not exactly regulated, the temperature of the 

 flame was often low, so much so that if the supply of 

 gas were diminished, the flame went out altogether. 

 Bunsen was not satisfied with this, and he said : " I 

 am going to make a lamp in which the mixture of air 

 and gas shall burn without any wire gauze." This, I 

 thought, would be a difficult task, as a mixture con- 

 taining ten volumes of air and one of gas becomes 

 explosive and the flame would then pass down the 

 tube to the nozzle where the gas escapes, and thus the 

 lamp would be rendered useless. However, Bunsen, 

 nothing daunted, made a large number of experiments 

 on the relative size of the openings for gas and air, and 



E 2 



