vii 



out of any materials which happened to be at hand, seemed to cost him 

 no trouble : glass, wood, and metal were all alike made to obey his hand ; 

 and the suggestion of an experiment, chemical or physical, had not usually 

 to wait many hours for its realization. 



Duppa retained to the last a great affection for this school, often 

 speaking of the happiness of the life he led there and of the excellency 

 of the training, in the highest terms, and contrasting it with an English 

 school to which he was afterwards sent, where he was very unhappy and 

 learnt nothing. At Hofwyl there were no rewards and no punishments 

 strictly so called, and the pupils were encouraged to cultivate habits of 

 observation. 



When only twelve years old he lost his father, who died at the early 

 age of thirty-seven. He was now removed from the Swiss school after 

 spending only three years there ; nevertheless he always contended that 

 he received his education at Hofwyl. After leaving the English school 

 he had some private tuition, and then proceeded to Cambridge, where 

 he made the acquaintance of Prof. W. Hallowes Miller, for whom 

 he ever afterwards retained a warm regard. He left Cambridge with- 

 out taking a degree, and began to read for the bar ; but finding the 

 sedentary work utterly repuguant to his tastes, he abandoned it and 

 went to Italy for three years to recruit his health, which was, even at 

 this time, by no means strong. Here he turned to account the know- 

 ledge of mineralogy which he had acquired at Cambridge, and made a 

 small collection of rare and interesting minerals. Returning from Italy 

 in the year 1854, he determined to devote himself to the study of 

 Chemistry. With this view he entered the Eoyal College of Chemistry 

 as a pupil of Dr. Hofmann in the autumn of 1855. We find him in 

 1857 engaged upon his first original investigation on the action of sul- 

 phuric acid upon salicylic acid, by which he obtained sulphosalicylic acid*. 

 He afterwards prepared and investigated bromide of titanium. On 

 leaving the College of Chemistry he fitted up a laboratory in his country 

 seat at Hollingbourne near Maidstone, where, in conjunction with 

 Mr. W. H. Perkin, he commenced a series of most interesting and im- 

 portant investigations on the substitution products of acetic, malic, and 

 succinic acids, which culminated in one of the greatest achievements of 

 synthetical chemistry — the artificial production of tartaric acid. These 

 researches are described in seven memoirs published in the Philosophical 

 Magazine and the J ournal of the Chemical Societyf, 



Finding his residence at Hollingbourne severed him almost entirely 

 from scientific associates, he abandoned his private laboratory, came 

 in 1860 to reside in London, and worked for some months in the 

 laboratory of Dr. Erankland at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Here he 



* Jahresbericht der Chernie, 1857, p. 322. 



t Phil. Mag. (4) xiv. 217 ; Quarterly Journal of Chem. Soc. xi. 22 ; Phil. Mag. (4) 

 xvii. 280 ; Phil. Mag. (4) xviii. 54 ; Quarterly Journ. of Chem. Soc. xiii. 1, 2, and 102. 



