5 2 HER OES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



was presented by the surgeon of a French vessel that had been 

 wrecked on the coast, to whom he had done some kind offices. 

 Examining his treasure with eagerness, Davy soon perceived 

 the valuable aid he might derive in his philosophical experi- 

 ments from some of the articles ; and one of the principal of 

 them was, in no long time, converted into a tolerable air-pump. 

 The proper use of the instruments was, of course, as little 

 thought of by their new possessor as that of his master's 

 gallipots was wont to be when he had got them up to his garret. 

 Davy's subsequent success as an experimentalist, it is well 

 remarked by the writer to whom we have referred above, was 

 probably owing, in no small degree, to the necessity he was 

 placed under in his earliest researches of exercising his skill 

 and ingenuity in this fashion. "Had he," proceeds his 

 biographer, "in the commencement of his career, been fur- 

 nished with all those appliances which he enjoyed at a later 

 period, it is more than probable that he might never have 

 acquired that wonderful tact of manipulation, that ability of 

 suggesting expedients, and of contriving apparatus so as to meet 

 and surmount the difificulties which must constantly arise 

 during the progress of the philosopher through the unbeaten 

 tracks and unexplored regions of science. In this art Davy 

 certainly stands unrivalled j and, like his prototype, Scheele, he 

 was unquestionably indebted for his address to the circum- 

 stances which have been alluded to : there never, perhaps, was 

 a more striking exemplification of the adage, that necessity is 

 the parent of invention." 



A curious catalogue might be made of the shifts to which 

 ingenious students in different departments of art have resorted, 

 when, like Davy, they have wanted the proper instruments for 

 carrying on their inquiries or experiments. His is not the first 



