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dyer at Glasgow Field Bleach Works, where he remained for four 
years, after which, his health failing, he endeavoured to earn a sub- 
sistence by keeping a lending library, but without success, and 
ultimately returned to the dye-works where he was first employed, 
in the capacity of a clerk. Prior to this Mr Napier had written an 
essay of great excellence on dyeing, which had attracted the notice 
of the late Mr John Joseph Griffin, who combined the business of 
a dealer in chemical and philosophical apparatus with that of a 
publisher, in Glasgow, and afterwards in London. He accepted an 
appointment in this establishment to prepare and bottle chemical 
reagents, and to make up apparatus — an employment which he 
found very congenial, as in some autobiographical notes which he 
has left, he says : — £<r My position brought me into contact with all 
sorts of inquirers ; people in different trades came, not only to buy 
apparatus, but to question about difficulties. I had access to all 
kinds of chemistry books, and gave willing search to help them, thus 
gaining a knowledge of different trades ; but I wanted system, and 
to improve myself in this respect, I invited the members of our 
Mutual Instruction Society to my house, and went through a course 
of chemistry, following Graham’s work. By these means, and by 
nightly study, I obtained a pretty good knowledge of the principles 
of the science.” It was, doubtless, while in this employment that 
he made the acquaintance of the late Dr James Young, F.R.S., of 
Kelly, at that time laboratory assistant to the late Professor Graham, 
of Anderson’s College, Glasgow, who afterwards became Master of 
the Mint, which resulted in a life-long and most friendly intimacy. 
In the year 1839 the results obtained by Mr Thomas Spencer in the 
new art of electrotyping and electro-metallurgy excited much interest, 
and Mr Napier, on Mr Griffin’s account, carried out some laborious 
and important work with the object of applying the art to useful 
purposes, such as copying woodcuts and engraving plates, &c.; and 
in 1842 he was appointed to take a leading position in the London 
electroplating works of Messrs Elkington & Mason, where, it is 
needless to say, he discharged his duties in a manner which reflected 
the highest credit upon him, some of the work which he turned out 
being truly very tine. The interest he took in the process of copper- 
smelting led to the discovery of a great improvement in the refining 
and granulation of copper, by the application of soda ash, in which 
