AT MAGDALEN COLLEGE 29 



ground rendered it better adapted than were any of the rooms 

 on the upper floor, the easternmost of which, until now the 

 Physical Chemistry Room, became the private room of the 

 Tutor in Natural Science. The other three rooms, used as 

 the Photographic, Curator's, and Elementary Physics rooms 

 respectively, were left undisturbed. 



The new Chemical Laboratory on the upper floor, measuring 

 thirty-nine feet long by sixteen feet broad by eleven feet high 

 was designed as a beginners' laboratory. The positions and pro- 

 portions of windows and intervening piers were dictated by the 

 number and breadth of the benches, which it seemed advisable 

 to introduce into the space at our disposal. Flues for carrying 

 away fumes from draught hoods were made of three-inch 

 drain-pipes inserted in the walls, during the building. The 

 walls for a space of three feet above the benches are covered 

 with panes of ' opalite ' glass keyed on to cement, producing 

 a surface which is easily kept clean. The draught cupboard is 

 of glass and wood, built upon a bed of slate which, in our ex- 

 perience, has proved to be more durable than lead between the 

 splays of a window so as to be thoroughly well illuminated. 



The bench-tops are of well-seasoned kauri pine, painted 

 beneath with a coat of red lead paint to prevent shrinkage or 

 expansion due to alterations in the hygrometric state of the 

 air, and treated above with paraffin wax melted into the pores 

 of the wood with a flat iron, as a protection against corrosion. 

 Cupboards and drawers beneath the benches for the students 

 have been dispensed with on account of the great difficulty in 

 preventing them from being used as receptacles for apparatus 

 put away unwashed ; the bench-tops have thus been kept 

 at a lower and more convenient height than is customary 

 in chemical laboratories. 



The room on the ground floor, which is somewhat shorter 

 than the upper room, was intended as a research laboratory. 

 It has been furnished almost entirely with material from the 

 old Laboratory. At the present time it is being used by 

 Mr. N. V. Sidgwick, Fellow of Lincoln College, for the pre- 

 paration of the experiments in illustration of his lectures on 

 Organic Chemistry, and by Mr. H. E. W. Phillips. 



