In the early autumn of 1874 the Council proceeded to appoint the first professors of the College. The committee which drew up the scheme of instruction had recommended the inclusion of the subject of Engineering, with which should be associated the teaching of Mathematics by the same professor. However desirable it might be to make provision for instruction in the principles of Engineering—especially in Mechanical Engineering, in view of its bearing upon one of the most important industries of the town and district—the Council, for various reasons, were unable to give immediate effect to this particular recommendation. The subject of Mechanical Engineering, to be properly taught, requires the provision of workshops, laboratories, and an installation of costly plant. Even if the limited resources of the College had been sufficient at the time to make the most modest of beginnings, the temporary premises which had been leased would have been unsuitable for the purpose. Accordingly the authorities, with that characteristic Yorkshire caution which takes nothing on trust, goes no further than it can plainly see—nor, in the common phrase, puts out its hand further than it can draw it back again—decided to limit their appointments, to begin with, to Professorships of (1) Experimental Physics (with which they associated Mathematics); (2) Geology and Mining; (3) Chemistry. To the first Chair they elected the late Mr. A. W. Rücker, Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, and a Demonstrator in the Clarendon Laboratory—afterwards Sir Arthur Rücker, Sec. R.S., Professor of Physics in the Royal College of Science, London, and subsequently Principal of the reorganized University of London. To the second they appointed the late Mr. A. H. Green, formerly Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and a distinguished member of the Geological Survey, who subsequently became Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford. For the third appointment the Council selected the present writer, who had been a pupil, assistant, and demonstrator under the subject of this memoir at Owens College, and who, prior to his selection, had held the Chair of Chemistry in Anderson’s College, Glasgow, now merged into the splendidly endowed and equipped Royal Technical College.