10 HISTORY OF THE DAUBENY LABORATORY 



Descrip- The building was erected on the north side of the central 

 Bndin wes t greenhouse of the Physic Garden. It was more than a 

 mere lecture room, being a rectangular brick building of two 

 stories ; it was covered with stucco in a plain classical style. 

 That it was not originally contemplated to carry the building 

 much higher than the greenhouse on the south side of the 

 wall seems to be indicated by the fine cornice round the 

 lower part of the building. The upper story of four rooms 

 must, however, have been added soon after, as a domicile for 

 the Curator of the Building, and Dr. J. F. Payne, now 

 Physician at St. Thomas's Hospital, has informed me that 

 he occupied these rooms during his year as Probationer 

 Fellow, and took pupils l there. I can well remember a red 

 bedroom paper on the walls of one of the rooms. 



On the ground floor a central doorway (now a window) 

 opened into the Lecture Room, measuring forty-one feet long, by 

 twenty feet broad, by sixteen feet high, which was surrounded 

 by a gallery for cupboards for Physical and Chemical apparatus 

 (Plate 2). A large doorway in the middle of the south side 

 led to the Botanical Lecture Room, and at the east end was 

 Dr. Daubeny's private study, containing the Geological Col- 

 lections both Palaeontological and Volcanic (Plate 3). The 

 upper part of this room was also surrounded by cupboards 

 and drawers in which the Collections of Chemical and 

 Mineralogical Specimens were preserved, and it was divided 

 from the lower part by a floor. 



In the Lecture Room cupboards were carried round the 

 whole wall space, and even across the upper parts of the win- 

 dows, thus materially contributing to the gloom of the interior 2 . 

 In accordance with the College Order, the main fabric stood 

 four feet away from the Garden wall. The reason for this 

 detail is not easy to imagine, unless it be that among the 

 Fellows some harboured a design for the eventual demolition 



1 One of Dr. Payne's pupils was Mr. Edward Chapman, who, as he has 

 himself informed me, read physiological chemistry with Dr. Payne in 

 preparation for his final schools in 1863. 



2 That this was part of the original design would seem to be indicated 

 by the fact that, before the alterations made in 1902, the upper window- 

 sashes had never been provided with sash-lines and weights. 



