26 DECEMBER 1896, Page 3

Dr. Ludwig Mond has made a very splendid gift to

the scientific men of England in the Davy-Faraday Institute for physical and chemical research, fitted up with a very perfect laboratory, adjoining the Royal Institution, and placed under the care of Lord Rayleigh and Professor Dewar, whose services are to be given gratuitously to the superintendence of the researches which will be undertaken in the new laboratory. The Prince of Wales opened the Institute last Tuesday and acknowledged in a graceful speech the great generosity of Me noble gift, the value of which is said to be some £100,000. There can be no doubt of the extreme scientific worth of the new laboratory, which is to be superintended by Dr. Scott under the great chemists and physicists we have named. After the opening of the new laboratory and the Prince of Wales's speech of grateful acknowledgment, Professor Dewar exhibited some of the uses to which liquid air might be put in chemical research and the lowering of temperatures to extremely low points. He showed, for instance, how an india-rubber ball was made as brittle as glass at very low temperatures, and when thrown against the wall it was shattered to fragments,