all others in Germany. For the institutions of a university the largest sums may be expended, for this increases the respect and affection for them; but the suitable employment of these sums must be strictly controlled. The sums are there, but they are used in an intolerably ridiculous manner. I must be certain of what I may have to expect at Giessen. If driven to extremities I shall not return there this winter, whether I obtain leave or not. I shall know how to justify this step, for no one has been maltreated in the university in a more conspicuous manner. One cannot live at Giessen upon a salary of 800 florins. Four years ago I, in conjunction with four colleagues, asked for an increase of salary; it has been refused. You (the Chancellor von Linde) have assured me with smiles that the state treasury had no funds; from this I saw that you have never known grief and torturing care for the daily bread. From the moment of that refusal I have endeavored to acquire an independent position by ceaseless work; my exertions have not been without success, but they have surpassed my strength, and I have become an invalid; and if now, when I do not require the state any longer, I consider that with a few miserable hundred florins more my health need not have suffered in former years, because my life would have been more free from care, the hardest thought for me is that my situation was known to you. The means which the laboratory possesses have been too small from the beginning. I had four walls given to me instead of a furnished laboratory. Notwithstanding my requests, no sum for furnishing the same, or for buying apparatus, has been provided. I required instruments and specimens, and have been obliged to spend on these items annually from 300 to 400 florins from my own means; besides the famulus paid by the state I required an assistant, who costs me 320 florins—deduct both expenses from my salary, and there remains not enough to clothe my children. From this original treatment of the laboratory the consequence has arisen that it possesses no property, for I can show that the arrangements, fittings, instruments, specimens, which have made the Giessen laboratory—I can say it without blushing—the first in Germany, are my property. I will say nothing more about myself my account with Giessen is closed. My path is not the one of reptiles, the easiest though the dirtiest. What I have said will suffice to justify with the ministry and the prince my resolution not to lecture at Giessen during this winter (1834—'35). If I am in health I may not lack the power to establish a kind of university for my branches of science at my own risk. If I am not permitted, and if I receive my congé, this will free me from the charge of ingratitude toward the country from the means of which my scientific training has been possible. I have learned to bear much injustice, many a false judgment, but this reproach of ingratitude would be too heavy for me to bear."
This letter pictures to you the conditions which prevailed at Darmstadt, but it is still more important, because it shows that such strong language was required to bring down the ministry, and that which no kind of friendly representation had been able to effect, this threat did. In 1835 he had to take compulsory repose. I find in the list of his publications only three small papers dating from this period, of which one only was a research; but in almost every other year there were from ten to twenty researches and publications.
In 1836 another active period begins. In that year there were nine researches by himself alone, thirteen by himself and Pelouze. In 1837 there were nine researches by himself and five with Wöhler, in-
