12 HISTORY OF THE DAUBENY LABORATORY 



devote his time and strength more particularly to his duties in 

 connexion with the Chairs of Botany and of Rural Economy, 

 which he held conjointly until death. Consequently the 

 Laboratory was only ready for use at a time when its founder 

 had already lived those years of his life which were the most 

 productive of scientific research. His published investigations 

 on Volcanos, on Mineral Waters, on the Atomic Theory, and on 

 various problems of Vegetable Physiology had long had a great 

 and well-deserved reputation in the scientific world. It was 

 therefore hardly to be expected that from the new Laboratory 

 should issue the results of investigations equal in importance 

 to those which marked the most fertile period of his scientific 

 activity. During this period, however, it had been the prin- 

 cipal Chemical Laboratory in the University *. 



Like many other leaders of science Daubeny found the 

 later years of his life more and more occupied with affairs 

 of administration and busied with literary rather than with 

 experimental work. And, stirred by the religious contro- 

 versies of the times (1860), he too contributed his share to 

 theological literature. 



Lectures. As soon as the new Laboratory at Magdalen was ready 

 for occupation he appears to have ceased lecturing in the 

 vaults of the Ashmolean 2 , which seems to have been in 1 849, 

 when the names of the Choristers, of Frederick Bulley, then 

 a Fellow of the College, and of many Magdalen men, 

 appear in the Lecture Lists, and the Professor published 

 a Syllabus of a course of Lectures on the Principles of 

 Inorganic Chemistry. 



Although the continually increasing burden of new and 

 expanding duties had compelled Daubeny to resign the 

 Professorship of Chemistry in the University in 1854, yet he 

 was so deeply impressed with the advantages to be derived 



1 The Christ Church Building, left vacant by the transfer of the Lee's 

 anatomical collection and of Dr. Acland's osteological and pathological 

 collections to the University Museum, was not equipped as a chemical 

 laboratory and lecture room until 1866. Some physical apparatus of an 

 elementary kind was added soon after the appiontment of a third Lee's 

 readership in 1869. The Balliol Laboratory was not opened before 1879. 



2 Cp. Note to the Address to Members of the University, published as an 

 Appendix to the Guide to the Botanic Garden, p. 13. 



