lviii Animal Report of the Council. 



of his demonstrators and assistant-lecturers, beginning (or nearly 

 so) with Dittmar and Schorlemmer, who afterwards, at Roscoe's 

 suggestion, was appointed Professor of Organic Chemistry, and 

 contributed the volume on that branch of the science to their 

 joint magnum opus, and including Thorpe, Smithells, and many 

 younger men. Sir Edward Thorpe, who for a number of years 

 was, in more ways than one, his chief's alter ego, has, quite 

 recently, enlarged the obituary notice written by him for the 

 Transactions of the Royal and Chemical Societies, into a most 

 readable as well as instructive biography of his honoured friend. 

 Still larger, of course, is the list of students in his classes who 

 have made a name for themselves as men of science ; but it may 

 be doubted whether there is one of them who would not regard 

 Roscoe's encouragement of research as the most effective element 

 in his guidance. A far more multitudinous body of learners 

 were taught to understand something of his gifts as an instructor, 

 apart from his manipulative ability as an experimenter, by means 

 of that clearness of exposition and inborn dislike of the super- 

 fluous which his manuals attest — the Elementary Chemistry, 

 with its 2-300,000, and the Chemistry Primer, with its 3-400,000 

 printed copies, which have taught generations of undergraduates 

 and schoolboys the rudiments of his science. The same qualities, 

 added to the sympathetic charm of a genial and absolutely un- 

 affected manner, account for the unfailing success of his popular 

 lectures of various sorts and kinds. At the Royal Instituion, 

 where the audiences at least know something of the art cf 

 lecturing, he made his first appearance at the age of twenty- 

 three ; but his success was most striking in the Science Lectures 

 for the People, which sprang from the high-minded and warm- 

 hearted conception of a series of addresses to unemployed 

 operatives at the time of the Cotton Famine of 1862, which may 

 be said to have been, for many years afterwards, a standing feature 

 of Lancashire life. 



Roscoe's association with Manchester was, it has been said, 

 so enduring that its character only changed — and was then far 

 from entirely — after his election to Parliament as member for 



