116 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. III. 



some time, and carelessly casting my eye over the table, I saw 

 something dark and shining in the bottom of the basins ; re- 

 membering our former trials, I picked out a little of it, and saw 

 it had a crystalline structure. What, thought I, if this be the 

 muriate of morphia, which has slowly separated from it. I 

 showed it to Dr. Christison ; ' Oh,' says he (for he had been too 

 often disappointed to entertain sanguine hopes), ' it will just be 

 muriate of lime,' a useless thing. I resolved to try ; boiled a 

 little with alcohol in a tube, and having my attention at the 

 time directed to something else, put the tube aside, thinking 

 that the proof of its being morphia was incomplete, yet puzzled 

 to conceive it anything else. For two or three days I was em- 

 ployed in other processes ; and, on the third or fourth, it chanced 

 a test tube was wanting. I carelessly took the one in which 

 the solution of the crystalline matter had been put, but as I 

 proceeded to wash it, I was struck by a singular appearance 

 inside, and what was my astonishment and delight, on looking 

 more closely, to find a most beautiful circle of small feathery 

 crystals, which it could not be doubted were morphia, and which 

 was completely proven to be this, by adding the test of morphia, 

 which gave the most characteristic results. I am now analysing 

 the whole, some two gallons of stuff, having volunteered to un- 

 dergo the disagreeableness of the smell, which I keep from every 

 one else, by shutting two glass doors between me and them. 

 You will understand that this is refuse liquor, discarded by the 

 druggists as useless, from which we are separating a large 

 quantity of the precious high-priced muriate of morphia. We 

 shall have a fine laugh at old - - throwing away the good 

 morphia, and work hard at it, for I believe it will please Chris- 

 tison ; and there is a great deal of useful manipulation to myself. 

 " But I'll tell you another laboratory tale, which cannot fail 

 to interest you as a Scotchman, away from your country, and 

 fond of your native language. The other morning, when all 

 standing before the museum fire, before going in to lecture, 

 Bartolome' announced some rather singular proposition, on which 

 the Doctor commented by saying, ' It's all a lee frae end to end.' 

 This was quite unintelligible to Bartolome, who is a capital 

 English scholar and speaker. On this Dr. Christison took 



