183738. FIRST LECTURES ON CHEMISTRY. Ill 



' thy name is glass.' While Bartolome was working away with 

 a long flexible rod and a sponge, polishing the inside most care- 

 fully, for he is a very neat-handed, ingenious fellow, bang was 

 heard an awful sound, and the point of the rod protruded ! So 

 much for our calamities. I hope you sympathize. I am sure 

 J. G. retains a sufficiently vivid remembrance of his apothecary 

 dealings most sincerely to feel with us in our present bereave- 

 ment. 



" I may tell you another odd conversation one with Barto- 

 lome who is really a fine fellow, from whom I learn a great deal. 

 We were talking about some of the infidel and atheistic students, 

 and mourning their folly. ' Ah ! I wish they were Free-Masons, 

 they would then know the true God.' I am sure this idea of 

 evangelizing wicked people will greatly amuse you, and I could 

 tell you a great deal more ; but here is James L arrived to 

 say that Mr. L is just going, so I must seal up this bad and 

 hurriedly- written letter." 



" LABORATORY, November 25, 1837. 

 " ' SPECIMEN OF HIEROGLYPHICS.' 



" MY DEAR DAN, I have been upbraiding myself for many 

 days back for not writing you, but, in truth, I have been very 

 busily occupied, so much so, as almost to preclude me writing 

 any one, and I am still in debt an epistle to Macmillan and B , 

 both of whom I allow to stand aside (though you are not to tell 

 them) till your superior claims are satisfied. All notion of 

 letter for letter is absurd in our present circumstances. I shall 

 write you when I find time, taste, and opportunity, and I have 

 no doubt you will do the same to me, so I proceed to describe. 

 I may observe, that I should not likely have had leisure suffi- 

 cient to write to you to-day, had it not happened that last night, 

 while engaged in delivering my second chemical demonstration 

 before an audience of twenty, a piece of phosphorus on the end 

 of a wire, which I intended should have descended in a vessel 

 of oxygen-gas, became refractory, and whether because not dry 

 enough, which is Macgillivray's theory, throwing the blame on 

 me ; or because it was not sufficiently fixed on the wire, which 

 was only stuck into it, which is my hypothesis, blaming Macgilli- 



