career came to be discussed, he wished to enter the Christian ministry. From this course he was dissuaded both by his father and by Mr. Tilt, and in December 1844 he entered University College, London. Here he attended Graham's lectures on chemistry and worked in his private laboratory, and here he prepared his earliest scientific contribution on "Analysis of Sand from St. Michael's Bay, Normandy", which was read at a meeting of the Royal Chemical Society on 16 November 1846. Next year, he received a gold medal from the college for his study on "Gun Cotton and Xyloidine". Later in the same year he went to University of Giessen to work under Justus von Liebig, returning in April 1848 with the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The subject of his dissertation was possibly "Artificial Formation of Urea from Fulminic Acid".