Of the stimulating influence of these Penny Lectures Roscoe received abundant testimony: in after-life he frequently met persons, some occupying a high and responsible position in commerce and industry, who informed him that they were indebted to them for their first interest in science. One such person was the late Mr. Thomas Parker, a self-made man, and founder of the well-known electrical firm of Elwell-Parker. Services such as these, combined with Roscoe’s growing popularity and influence, necessarily reacted favourably upon the fortunes of the College, and it steadily grew in favour. The chemical department especially increased in numbers, and the laboratory soon became inadequate to accommodate the students, who came to it from all parts of England, attracted by its fame as a chemical school. The prospects of the College were now so well assured that in 1865 the governing body and the professors began to consider the desirability of extending its scheme of studies, and, what at the moment was even more urgent, providing new and greatly increased accommodation. Owing to the adverse state of trade at the time, no immediate steps were possible; but in 1867 a town’s meeting resolved “That the time had come for the public of the district to unite for the purpose of developing the College on a more comprehensive scale, and in appropriate and convenient buildings.” An executive committee, on which Roscoe was placed, was appointed to carry out this and certain consequential resolutions. He was also required to serve on various sub-committees, dealing with the new site, buildings, extension and rearrangement of courses of study. It says much for the influence and weight he had now acquired in the counsels of the College, and for the confidence reposed in his judgment and business capacity, that no other member of the staff was called upon to take so large and so responsible a share in the extension movement. The new Constitution as settled by the extension committee, to the extent that it modified or enlarged the original scheme of the founder, necessitated an application for a Bill in Parliament. The action of the Governing Body in enlarging the scope of the College was generally approved and was warmly supported, amongst others by Mr. Freeman the historian. He considered that the members of the two ancient Universities ought to feel, and he was sure that they largely did feel, a special sympathy in the planting of an institution like Owens College in such a city as Manchester.