orkshop or laboratory, in Northumberland, where these facts
were gathered, will soon be removed to the Campus of Pennsylvania State
College. It will be preserved with care and in it, it is hoped, will be
gradually assembled everything to be found relating to the noble soul
who once disclosed Nature's secrets in this simple primitive structure,
which American chemists should ever cherish, and hold as a Mecca for all
who would look back to the beginnings of chemical research in our
beloved country.

How appropriate it would be could there be deposited in the little
laboratory, the apparatus owned and used by Priestley, which at present
constitutes and for many years past has formed an attractive collection
in Dickinson College, (Pa.) There would be the burning lens, the
reflecting telescope, the refracting telescope (probably one of the
first achromatic telescopes made), the air-gun, the orrery, and flasks
with heavy ground necks, and heavy curved tubes with ground
stoppers--all brought (to Dickinson) through the instrumentality of
Thomas Cooper, "the greatest man in America in the powers of his mind
and acquired information and that without a single exception" according
to Thomas Jefferson.

And how the Library would add to the glory of the place, but, alas! it
has been scattered far and wide, for in 1816, Thomas Dobson advertised
the same for sale in a neatly printed pamphlet of 96 pages. In it were
many scarce and valuable books. The appended prices ranged quite widely,
reaching in one case the goodly sum of two hundred dollars!

And as future chemists visit this unique reminder of Dr. Priestley it
should be remembered that on the piazza of the dwelling house there
assembled August 1, 1874, a group of men who planned then and there for
the organization of the present American Chemical Society.

The "Essays," previously mentioned, will be found intensely interesting
but they are somewhat difficult to read because of their strange
nomenclature. Here is Priestley's account of the method pursued by him
to get nitrogen:

Pure phlogisticated air (nitrogen) may be procured in the easiest
and surest manner by the use of iron only--To do this I fill
phials with turnings of malleable iron, and having filled them
with water, pour it out, to admit the air of the atmosphere, and
in six or seven hours it will be diminished ... what remains of
the air in the phials will be the purest phlogistica