liy . A nniial Report of the Council. 



In the interval between these periods, young; Hart had been 

 for a short time at the Chemical Works of Messrs. Tennants, at 

 Ardwick, Manchester, where his father, William Hart, assisted 

 Dr. James Young, F.R.S., in the management. In 1849, he 

 finally relinquished law and returned to the Chemical Works, 

 After spending a short time in the office he was, to his intense 

 satisfaction, drafted into the laboratory. 



He took up chemistry enthusiastically and attended night 

 classes at the old Mechanics' Institute, in Cooper Street, under 

 Dr. Allen, and read diligently the chemical books in the library 

 attached to Tennants' laboratory. " Graham," " Turner," and 

 "Brande" were his oracles, and he often said in after life that if 

 he did not acquire as much from them as he ought, he found 

 out at least " how little he knew and how much there was to 

 be known." The innate modesty of the man comes out in this 

 typical expression. 



In 1847 and the following years, came Young's great dis- 

 covery of the shale oil process, experiments in which were con- 

 ducted at Ardwick. In connection with this, in 185 1, it was 

 necessary to make some tons of solid caustic soda from liquid 

 caustic. This is probably the earliest record of the manufacture 

 of solid caustic soda in England. William Gossage was at this 

 time experimenting (upon the concentration of vitriol) at the 

 Ardwick works, and subsequently devoting his attention to the 

 manufacture of caustic soda, took out his well-known patent 

 in 1853. 



In the year 1852, Young left Messrs. Tennants' to exploit 

 his shale oil process, and Peter Hart became chemist to the 

 worTis, at the age of eighteen, acting under his father who became 

 manager. 



The next year he pubHshed his first original paper "On a 

 new method of estimating Tin in Native Peroxide of Tin Ore," 

 in a periodical called The Chemist. 



The tin compounds in those days were the mordants on 

 which the dyers and printers mainly relied, the aniline colours 

 not having been yet invented, the animal and vegetable kingdoms 



