AT MAGDALEN COLLEGE II 



of the building, while others considered that fumes might 

 penetrate the wall and damage the plants in the greenhouse 

 on the south side. Whatever the reason, certain it is that 

 the space between the outer wall of the Laboratory and the 

 wall of the Physic Garden was eventually covered with a glass 

 roof, and made to enclose three staircases, five flights of 

 stairs in all, which placed the upper rooms in communication 

 with the ground floor. 



Two of the staircases were probably introduced at about 

 the time (1853) when, the greenhouse 1 at the back of the 

 Laboratory having become a Lecture Room for the Professor 

 of Botany, a Botanical Museum 2 was built over it, with part 

 of the funds collected for the improvement of the Physic 

 Garden by Daubeny. 



A fine equatorially mounted telescope of five-inch aperture Telescope 

 by Cooke was presented to the College in March, 1855, for buildin s- 

 which a new stand was ordered in the following June ; and in 

 December, 1856, it was ordered that a building for the new 

 telescope should be erected * contiguous to the wall of the 

 Botanic Garden according to the plan of Mr. Buckler, at an 

 estimate of ,185.' 



The space between the Telescope vault and the west wall Work- 

 of the Laboratory was occupied by a workshop of rather Meteoro- 

 flimsy structure and an Observer's Room, whence a staircase logical 

 gave access to the telescope above, and in which were after- 

 wards placed all the instruments connected with meteorology. 

 Both workshop and Apparatus Room were pulled down when 

 the new building of 1902 was erected. Outside the window 

 of the latter room stood a large aquarium, a gift to the 

 College, which for ten years was tenanted by some golden 

 tench which had been presented by the Duke of Bedford 

 in 1875. 



The building had hardly been finished six years when Resigna- 

 Daubeny resigned the Chair of Chemistry to a younger man, ^hair of 



Mr. (afterwards Sir Benjamin) Brodie, in order that he might Chem- 



1 Built in the eighteenth century. 



2 The original access to the upper room was by the central of the said 

 three staircases on the north side of the wall. The doorways in the party 

 wall were bricked up in Professor Lawson's time. 



