professorial appointment, affording abundant opportunities for original work, in favor of a more lucrative and exacting appointment involving duties which, if rightly fulfilled, must seriously curtail these same opportunities. It is praiseworthy of him to add to his means by compiling manuals of elementary science, and by writing attractive works on science for the delectation of general readers; but it is forsooth derogatory to him, if not indeed a downright prostitution of his science, that he should contribute to his means of livelihood by making his knowledge subservient to the wants of departments, corporations, and individuals, alike of great and small distinction, standing seriously in need of the special scientific services that he is able to render them.
A glance back suffices to show how foreign to the ideas of the great men who preceded us is this modern notion of any reprehensibility attaching to applied or professional science. In his earlier days. Professor Faraday was largely employed in connection with all sorts of practical questions, and until almost the close of his life continued to act as scientific adviser to the Trinity House. No man was more constantly occupied in advising with regard to manufacturing and metallurgic and fiscal questions than Professor Graham, who ended his days holding the official position of Master of the Mint; a position in which he succeeded another eminent man of science, less known, however, as a chemist than as an astronomer, Sir John Herschel. As in these typical instances, so also in very many others; and, if I may be allowed to draw at all on my own personal experiences, I would say that some of the most pleasant remembrances of my past life relate to the occasions on which I had the good fortune, early in my career, to be brought into association, as a junior professional colleague, with some among the then most eminent of scientific men. It did not indeed happen to me to be associated in this particular manner with Faraday, or Graham, or Daniel, or yet with their frequent colleague, Richard Phillips, one of the early Presidents of the Chemical Society, for many years the able and omniscient editor of the "Philosophical Magazine," and the leading professional chemist of his day. But among those who have passed away from us altogether, or have for some cause or another quitted our ranks, my recollection goes back to professional association with a host of distinguished men of science, whose membership would, of itself, suffice to insure an honorable estimation for any profession to which they belonged. On different occasions it has been my lot to be engaged in advising on various questions in conjunction with Arthur Aikin, a personal friend of Priestley, writer of a still valuable dictionary of chemistry, the first Treasurer of the Chemical Society, and for many years the leading authority in regard to chemical metallurgy; with Dr. Thomas Anderson, of Glasgow, an assiduous and successful worker in the then unfamiliar field of organic chemistry, and for many years consulting chemist to the Highland
