xxii BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION 



up. He seems to have led the life of a country boy, and his 

 studies he afterwards described as being " of a most desultory 

 character." Experiments in chemistry, made at home, seem to 

 have been one of his favourite occupations. He was sent 

 successively to Eton, and to Brasenose College, Oxford, which 

 he entered in 1832. While at Oxford he attended some of the 

 lectures of Dr Daubeny, the professor of chemistry. He left 

 the University without taking a degree. 



In 1834 Mr Lawes entered on the personal management of 

 the home farm at Rothamsted, then of about 250 acres ; he at 

 the same time threw himself heartily into chemical investiga- 

 tions. He tells us : " At the age of twenty I gave an order to a 

 London firm to fit up a complete laboratory, and I am afraid it 

 sadly disturbed the peace of mind of my mother to see one of 

 the best bedrooms in the house fitted up with stoves, retorts, 

 and all the apparatus and reagents necessary for chemical 

 research. At the time my attention was very much directed to 

 the composition of drugs ; I almost knew the Pharmacopoeia 

 by heart, and I was not satisfied until I had made the acquaint- 

 ance of the author, Dr A. T. Thomson. The active principle 

 of a number of substances was being discovered at this time, 

 and, in order to make these substances, I sowed on my farm 

 poppies, hemlock, henbane, colchicum, belladonna, etc. Some 

 of these are still growing about the place. Dr Thomson had 

 suggested a process for making calomel and corrosive sublimate 

 by burning quicksilver in chlorine gas. I undertook to carry 

 out the process on a large scale, and wasted a good deal of 

 time and money on a process which was, in fact, no improve- 

 ment on the process then in use." At this time Dr Anthony 

 Todd Thomson, Professor of Materia Medica at University 

 College, London, was his chief instructor and adviser. An old 

 barn at Rothamsted was transformed into a laboratory, and 

 here the calomel was afterwards made ; this laboratory 

 remained in active use till 1855. 



The researches of De Saussure, on the nutrition of plants, 

 seem to have first called Mr Lawes' attention to the relations 



