Official treatment of Dr. Stenhouse. 53 



subsequently " requested his acceptance of a gift of 

 two thousand pounds, not as a reward, but as a 

 mark of appreciation of the value of his researches, 

 and of the influence they were exercising on the 

 maritime interests of England and the world at 

 large." The kind of labour rewarded in this case 

 was not scientific discovery, but the practical appli- 

 cation of previously existing scientific knowledge. 



The case of the late Dr. Stenhouse, F.R.S., is one 

 of rather an opposite kind. That gentleman devoted 

 his life throughout to pure investigations in organic 

 chemistry, and published several of his researches 

 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal 

 Society."* His discoveries are very numerous, and 

 although not much applied to practical uses by him- 

 self, the result of his researches on Lichens, and the 

 yellow r gum of Botany Bay, have been applied 

 extensively by other persons in the manufacture of 

 " French purple " and picric acid, and will doubtless 

 continue to be applied to valuable uses. He held 

 the Government appointment of Assayer to the 

 Royal Mint, London, an office for several years un- 

 profitable to him, but of increasing remunerative 

 value, and which would have been subsequently 

 worth 1,200 a year; but after the decease of his 

 colleague, Dr. Miller, in 1870, that office, which was 

 then worth to him about 600 a year, was abolished 

 by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he lost the 



* See " Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers," vol. 5, pp. 719 

 and 890 ; and vol. 8, p. 1,010. 



