irability of nitrous oxide, and made a number of laborious
experiments on gaseous bodies, which he afterwards published in
"Researches Chemical and Philosophical," a work that was universally well
received by the chemical world, and created a high reputation for its
author, at that time only twenty-one years of age. This led to his
introduction to Count Rumford, and to his being elected Professor of
Chemistry to the Royal Institution in Albemarle-street. On obtaining this
appointment Mr. Davy gave up all his views of the medical profession, and
devoted himself entirely to chemistry.

Mr. Davy's first experiments as Professor of Chemistry in the Royal
Institution, were made on the substance employed in the process of
tanning, with others to which similar properties were ascribed, in
consequence of the discovery made by M. Seguier, of Paris, of the
peculiar vegetable matter, now called tannin. He was, during the same
period, frequently occupied in experiments on galvanism.

To the agriculturist, chemistry is of the first consideration. The
dependence of agriculture upon chemical causes had been previously
noticed, but it was first completely demonstrated in a course of lectures
before the Board of Agriculture, which Mr. Davy commenced in the year
1802, and continued for ten years. This series of lectures contained much
popular and practical information, and belongs to the most useful of Mr.
Davy's scientific labours; for the application of chemistry to
agriculture is one of its most important results; and so rapid were the
discoveries of the author, that in preparing these discourses for
publication, a few years afterwards, he was under the necessity of making
several alterations, to adapt them to the improved state of chemical
knowledge, which his own labours had, in that short time, produced.

In 1803, he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1805, a
member of the Royal Irish Academy. He now enjoyed the friendship of most
of the distinguished literary men and philosophers of the metropolis, and
enumerated among his intimate friends, Sir Joseph Banks, Cavendish,
Hatchett, Wollaston, Children, Tennant, and other eminent men. At the
same time he corresponded with the principal chemists of every part of
Europe. In 1806, he was appointed to deliver, before the Royal Society,
the Bakerian lecture, in which he displayed some very interesting new
agencies of electricity, by means of the celebrated galvanic apparatus