20 SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



chemistry class and that what he was proposing would be dan- 

 gerous. Next morning he called for me when I was at breakfast 

 about half-past seven, on his way down to College. He said he 

 had read up about what I had said and I was quite right, and we 

 walked down to College together. After that he called for me 

 every morning on the way down. The class began at 8 a.m. 

 and he walked all the way from Ashton Terrace to the High 

 Street, which must be nearly three miles. 



At that time he knew nothing of chemistry theoretically, but 

 he had for some time been working at home at various experi- 

 ments as we called them. He worked in his bedroom, and there 

 were a great many bottles always about, containing acids, salts, 

 mercury, and so on. When we began to meet in this way, I 

 found he was quite familiar with all the ways of getting the 

 material and apparatus for working in chemistry. We used to 

 meet at my house in the afternoons and do what practical work 

 we could, making oxygen and hydrogen and various simple 

 compounds such as oxalic acid from sugar. We also worked a 

 good deal with glass. We used to go to Spencer's shop in Union 

 Street, and also to White's, the optician's, and buy flasks, retorts, 

 crucibles, spirit lamps and so on, and also materials like zinc 

 filings for making hydrogen, sulphuric and nitric acids, etc. 

 We never got the length of any real analysis, but became quite 

 expert at the things we did, which were usually repetitions of 

 the demonstrations given in the class or described in books. 



There were a number of old chemistry books in his house. 1 

 I do not know whom they belonged to originally, but they were 

 a good deal out of date. Just before that time there had been 

 considerable changes in chemistry, particularly in the nomen- 

 clature, and spectrum analysis had just been introduced. I 

 remember one book in particular was Faraday's Manipulation. 

 This was a most useful book, and it had been a great stand-by 



1 These probably came, at least in part, from the library of the uncle 

 John, the sugar planter in Demerara. 



