vi WORK AT MANCHESTER 143 



Annales de Chimie. The upshot was that vanadium, 

 which had hitherto been wandering among the 

 elements like a stray goddess (Vanacjis being the 

 Scandinavian name for Venus), was brought home to 

 her relations and placed in an assured position among 

 the elements. This is certainly the best piece of 

 scientific work I ever did, and I do not know that 

 I ever enjoyed anything of an intellectual kind 

 more thoroughly. I may mention that I was 

 assisted in the work at first by Dr. Thorpe, who 

 made some of the important preliminary determina- 

 tions, and afterwards by a young Hungarian, Mr. 

 Oelhofer, and by Dr. Finkelstein, who all showed 

 great ability. I believe a good deal of my subse- 

 quent ill-health was due to working on this sub- 

 ject in the old laboratory. I was obliged to use 

 rooms which were not intended for such purposes, and 

 breathing the bad air due to the presence of products 

 of combustion, chlorine, and other horrors had certainly 

 a deleterious effect upon me. The subject aroused 

 very general attention throughout the scientific world, 

 and my view concerning the relationships of the metal 

 was universally adopted. Those who wish to under- 

 stand this matter more fully can read the papers in the 

 Philosophical Transactions (Bakerian Lecture, 1868), 

 and also several lectures on the subject which I gave 

 at the Royal Institution. 



One further point of interest I may refer to without 

 becoming too specially chemical. The explanation of 

 the close resemblance between vanadium on the one 

 hand, and phosphorus and arsenic on the other, is the 

 chief outcome of this work. These three elements 

 replace one another in all proportions, and minerals 

 containing vanadium crystallise in the same form as, or 

 are isomorphous with, those containing phosphorus and 



