Page:Essays and Discourses.djvu/19

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mation in reference to India which will not be found elsewhere, and it is of the utmost notice."

John Bright, in acknowledging a copy of the booklet, wrote a long letter to the author in which he said:--

I regret with you and condemn the course of Lord Dufferin in Burma. It is a renewal of the old system of crime and guilt, which we had hoped had been for ever abandoned. There is an ignorance on the part of the public in this country and great selfishness here and in India as to our true interests in India. These departures from morality and true statesmanship will bring about calamity and perhaps ruin, which your children may witness and deplore.

PROFESSOR

On his return to India he joined the Presidency College of Calcutta as a professor, and since that year (1889) he has practically confined all his attention to his chemical researches. The results of his devotion at the Chemical Laboratory of this College, particularly in the years between 1896-1898, were embodied in his first scientific publication under the title of "Chemical Research at the Presidency College." This little brochure was "affectionately inscribed" to "my friend, Prithwis Chandra Ray, author of the Poverty Problem in India," and at once established his reputation as a great Indian scientist. In 1904, he was deputed by the Government of Bengal to visit the principal chemical laboratories of Europe and was everywhere received with open arms by chemists and savants. At a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, Mr. Troost welcomed Dr. Ray in words of generous appreciation on behalf of that august body.

"Presence of a Foreign Savant":--

"The President announces that Mr. Ray, Professor of Chemistry at Calcutta and author of important works on the nitrites as also of History of Hindu Chemistry, is present at our meeting to-day and offers him welcome." La Nature, March 11, 1905.