8 HISTORY OF THE DAUBENY LABORATORY 



much influenced by the work and genius of his great friend 

 Liebig 1 , who had won his Professorship at Giessen in 1824, 

 soon after Dr. Daubeny's election to the Aldrichian Professor- 

 ship, and who published his great work on Agricultural 

 Chemistry in the very year of Dr. Daubeny's appointment 

 Liebig's to the Rural Economy Chair. In 1842 Liebig made a sort 

 of triumphal tour among the agriculturalists of this country, 

 expounding his views on the need of chemical knowledge. 

 Lord Playfair 2 has stated that one of the immediate effects 

 of Liebig's campaign was to induce colleges to open labora- 

 tories for teaching chemistry. Chief among these were the 

 laboratory of the School of Mines in Jermyn Street and the 

 laboratories of University College and of King's College, 

 London. A great wave of laboratory building swept across 

 this country. In 1845 the Royal College of Chemistry, now 

 merged in the Royal School of Science, South Kensington, 

 was founded, and it is very likely that the first inception 

 of the Daubeny Laboratory is to be attributed, at any 

 rate in part, to Liebig's visit to this country a few years 

 before. 



Ash- Dr. Daubeny had hitherto delivered his professorial lectures 



Lecture on Chemistry in the basement of the Ashmolean Building, in 

 Room a subterranean room which was quite unfit for the purpose. 



* n ^ aCt> ^ G k a( * on more t ^ ian one occas i n felt it his duty 

 'to press upon the University the importance of providing, 

 as soon as possible, a suitable laboratory for the practical 

 instruction of students.' He described the old Lecture Room 

 as ' notoriously unworthy of a great University, being dark, 

 inconvenient and confined 3 .' 



Closely bound up with chemical operations as most of his 



1 The miniature porcelain bust of Liebig in the Laboratory was presented 

 to Dr. Daubeny by the great German chemist himself. 



2 Hofmann Memorial Lecture. Journal of the Chemical Society, 1896, 

 P. 577. 



3 My friend Mr. Webb has drawn my attention to a passage in Henry 

 Kingsley's Ravenjhoe, which is strongly reminiscent of the defective ventila- 

 tion of the old Ashmolean Lecture Room : * He lay here one day when 

 the doctors came down from London. And one of them put a hand- 

 kerchief over his face which smelt like chemical experiments and somehow 

 reminded him of Dr. Daubeny.' Gh. Ixii. 



