e doctor took him into a little study,
and, pointing to an old tea-tray on the table, containing a few
watch-glasses, test-papers, a small balance, and a blowpipe, said,
"There is all the laboratory I have!"

Stothard learnt the art of combining colors by closely studying
butterflies' wings: he would often say that no one knew what he owed
to those tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn door served Wilkie in
lieu of pencil and canvas. Bewiek first practiced drawing on the
cottage walls of his native village, which he covered with his
sketches in chalk; and Benjamin Watt made his first brushes out of
the cat's tail. Ferguson laid himself down in the fields at night in
a blanket, and made a map of the heavenly bodies by means of a thread
with small beads on it stretched between his eye and the stars.
Franklin first robbed the thundercloud of its lightning by means of a
kite made with two cross-sticks and a silk handkerchief. Watt made
his first model of the condensing steam-engine out of an old
anatomist's syringe, used to inject the arteries previous to
dissection. Gifford worked his first problems in mathematics, when a
cobbler's apprentice, upon small scraps of leather, which he beat
smooth for the purpose; whilst Rittenhouse, the astronomer, first
calculated eclipses on his plow handle.

The most ordinary occasions will furnish a man with opportunities or
suggestions for improvement, if he be but prompt to take advantage of
them. Professor Lee was attracted to the study of Hebrew by finding a
Bible in that tongue in a synagogue, while working as a common
carpenter at the repair of the benches. He became possessed with a
desire to read the book in the original, and, buying a cheap second-
hand copy of a Hebrew grammar, he set to work and learned the
language for himself. As Edmund Stone said to the Duke of Argyle, in
answer to his grace's inquiry how he, a poor gardener's boy, had
contrived to be able to read Newton's Principia in the Latin, "One
needs only to know the twenty-four letters of the alphabet in order
to learn everything else that one wishes." Application and
perseverance, and the diligent improvement of opportunities, will do
the rest.

The attention of Dr. Priestley, the discoverer of so many gases, was
accidentally drawn to the subject of chemistry through his living in
the neighborhood of a brewery. When visiting the place one day, he
noted the peculiar appearances attending the extinction of lighte