TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. 621 



Gay-Lussac for practical instruction at first without success, and that admission to 

 the laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique was ultimately granted him ouly through 

 the intervention of Von Humboldt. 



In a great many cases the student of chemistry must have been almost entirely 

 dependent upon private study, though books were scarce and materials more 

 costly than now. Davy, for example, seems to have had no instruction whatever 

 previous to his appointment as assistant to Dr. Beddoes at the Pneumatic Institute 

 at Bristol. 



Doubtless, therefore, the recollection of his own early difficulties when seeking 

 instruction contributed largely to influence Liebig in the establishment of the 

 laboratory in the University of Giessen, and in the adoption of the principles which 

 guided his teaching there. For the first time in the history of chemistry students 

 met not merely to listen to the discourse of a professor concerning his own ex- 

 periments and conclusions, but to examine for themselves the basis of the theories 

 taught, to learn the processes of analysis, and by independent investigation to 

 extend the boundaries of existing knowledge. 



The fame of the new school spread fast and far, and soon men from every part 

 of the civilised world assembled to share in the advantages offered. The influence 

 of the new method can be estimated when we reflect that nearly all the now 

 passing generation of chemists in England and America obtained the greater part 

 of their training in Liebig's laboratory ; and as a large number of them have been 

 teachers, it may be assumed that they transplanted into their own countries the 

 methods they had learnt from the great German master. 



It was not till 1846, long after the school at Giessen had risen into fame, that 

 in England a sense of our deficiencies in respect to provision for teaching chemistry 

 was felt strongly enough to lead to the establishment of a college of chemistry. 

 At that time the Professor of Chemistry at Oxford was also Professor of Botany. 

 At Cambridge it was thought praise and boast enough that the occupant of the 

 chair of chemistry had, during more than thirty years, frequently resided at the 

 University and every year gave a course of lectures. The Jacksonian professorship 

 was not then, as now, in the possession of a chemist. University College, London, 

 had at this period a very distinguished man in the chair of chemistry, but it was 

 only in 1848 that a commodious laboratory was provided by public subscription, 

 raised in commemoration of the services of Dr. Birkbeck in promoting popular 

 education. In that year Fownes was appointed to co-operate with Graham in the 

 work of teaching, though his premature death soon after left but little time for the 

 fulfilment of the rich promise of his earlier years. At Manchester John Owens had 

 died in 184G, leaving the bulk of his estate for the purpose of establishing a 

 university in Manchester, but as yet the Owens College was not. 



The foundation of the College of Chemistry in 1846 was therefore an event of 

 supreme importance in the history of chemical teaching in this country ; and though 

 at the time some dissatisfaction was expressed at the choice of the professor 

 selected to direct the work, who, though a distinguished pupil of Liebig, was not 

 an Englishman, all British chemists now concur in belieAdng the choice to have 

 been a most fortunate one. The great majority of my contemporaries having begun, 

 continued, or ended their studies in Oxford Street, they and all who have come 

 under Dr. Hofmann's teaching know how vast was his capacity for work and 

 how marvellous was the power he possessed of communicating his own enthusiasm 

 to his pupils. 



Since the time of which I have been speaking the means of instruction in 

 science in England have multiplied enormously. In University College, London, 

 founded in 1828, and in Owens College, Manchester, founded in 1851, not only 

 have chairs of chemistry existed from the first, but they have been occupied by a 

 succession of chemists of the highest eminence. But long after 1846 the whole of 

 the serious teaching of scientific chemistry was accomplished at the College of 

 Chemistry, and it was nigh upon twenty years before the Manchester school began, 

 to attract considerable notice. 



In 1872-3 the movement set in which has resulted in the erection of colleges 

 for higher instruction at a number of important English and Welsh towns. These, 



