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At the Royal Institution he had plenty of time for research, a good laboratory, and influential friends who took the greatest interest in his work and welfare. How different it was with poor Linnæus!

Concerning Davy's first course of lectures at the Royal Institution, it has been stated that

The age of Davy was essentially the age of the voltaic battery in chemical research; and what he did with the battery, recently invented by Volta, were discoveries in chemistry second to no others.

The researches, indicated in his Bakerian lecture of 1806, were rewarded with a prize of three thousand francs by the Académie des Sciences. He began his electrochemical researches in the early years of the last century. In his Elements of Chemical Philosophy he says:—