In his Bakerian Lecture, Davy observes, that "a historical detail of the progress of the investigation of all the difficulties that occurred, and of the manner in which they were overcome, and of all the manipulations employed, would far exceed the limits assigned to a Lecture." But to the chemist, every circumstance, however minute, connected with a subject of such commanding importance, is pregnant with interest; I therefore considered it my duty to search into the archives of the Institution, in the hope that I should discover some memoranda which might supply additional information. In examining the Laboratory Register, I have so far succeeded as to obtain some rough and imperfect notes, which will, to a certain degree, assist us in analysing the intellectual operations by which his mind ultimately arrived at the grand conclusion. It appears from this register that Davy commenced his enquiries into the composition of potash on the 16th, and obtained his great result on the 19th of October 1807.[76] His first experiments, however, evidently did not suggest the truth: he does not appear to have suspected the nature of the alkaline base until his last experiment, when the truth flashed upon him in the full blaze of discovery. His first note, dated the 16th, leads us to infer that he acted on a solid piece of potash, under the surface of alcohol, and several other liquids in which the alkali was not soluble; and that he obtained gaseous matter, which he called at the moment '_Alkaligen Gas_,' and which he appears to have examined most closely, without arriving at any conclusion as to its nature. On the following day, he, for the first time, would seem to have developed potassium by electric action on potash under oil of turpentine, for the note records the fact of "_the_ globules giving out gas by water, which gas _burnt in contact with air_;" and then follows a query--"Does _it_" (the matter of the globules) "not form gaseous compounds with ether, alcohol, and the oils?" Here, then, he evidently imagined, that the matter of the globules, which he had never obtained from potash, except when acted upon under oil of turpentine, had formed gaseous compounds with the ether, alcohol, and oils in his previous experiments, and given origin to that which he had termed '_Alkaligen Gas_.' [76] On the same day he decomposed Soda with somewhat different phenomena.