Life of Count Rumford. 405 



genious painstaking of the master-hand which was at 

 work upon them, and the beginnings of a rich library 

 of scientific journals and books gathered from Europe 

 and America. Count Rumford also contributed to the 

 pages two essays: On the Means of Increasing the Heat 

 obtained in the Combustion of Fuel, and On the Use 

 of Steam as a Vehicle for Conveying Heat. 



* o 



Of a list of four hundred and thirty-eight donations 

 of books, articles of furniture, and instruments made 

 in the first year to the Institution, most of them singly, 

 by individuals, no less than one hundred and seventy- 

 five are credited to Count Rumford, including a Lon- 

 don edition, in two volumes, of Franklin's Life and 

 Works. He had, at this time, accumulated a very- 

 large and valuable collection of apparatus and philo- 

 sophical instruments, many of them the work of his 

 own hands as well as the contrivances of his own in- 

 genuity, provided in pursuing his varied experiments. 

 These, in large part, the Count most generously gave 

 to the Institution, which he also supplied according to 

 the general rule that he had been so careful to introduce 

 as of comprehensive application in its plan with well- 

 constructed models of all his own inventions. The 

 repository very soon became a centre of attraction for 

 visitors as well as for residents in the metropolis. 



A contemporaneous account of the opening of the 

 Institution is given in the Gentleman's Magazine for 

 1800,* as follows: 



"Tuesday, March 11. A society under the title 

 of c The Royal Institution of Great Britain,' and under 

 the patronage of his Majesty, commenced its sittings 

 for the first time this day. Its professed object is to 



* Vol. LXX. Part I. p. 382. 



