so HER OES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



SIR HUMPHREY DAW 



IR HUMPHREY DAVY was born in 1778, at Pen 

 zance, in Cornwall. His father followed the profession 

 of a carver in wood in that town, where many of his perfor- 

 mances are still to be seen in the houses of the inhabitants. 

 All that we are told of Davy's school education is, that he was 

 taught the rudiments of classical learning at a seminary in 

 Truro. He was then placed by his father with an apothecary 

 and surgeon in his native place. But, instead of attending to 

 his profession, he spent his time either in rambUng about the 

 country or experimenting in his master's garret, sometimes to 

 the no small danger of the whole establishment ; and the doctor 

 and he at last agreed to part. About his fifteenth year he was 

 placed as pupil with another surgeon residing in Penzance; 

 but it does not appear that his second master had much more 

 success than his first in attempting to give him a liking for the 

 medical profession. The future philosopher, however, had 

 already begun to devote himself, of his own accord, to those 

 sciences in which he afterwards so greatly distinguished himself j 

 and proceeding upon a plan of study which he had laid down 

 for himself, he had, by the time he was eighteen, obtained a 

 thorough knowledge of the rudiments of natural philosophy and 

 chemistry, as well as made some proficiency in botany, anatomy. 



