1863: page 1

The introduction to the first volume of 1863 relates how one day 'a youth' at work in the laboratory suggests having a 'Christmas number' as he thinks it disgraceful 'that the talent of chemists should be like a great deal of their heat - latent'. The magazine was subsequently produced by the laboratory members  'for the sole benefit of their worthy selves and their beloved  friends and relations'. Conceived as a compilation of edifying literature, it includes a mix of original poems, translations and short stories.  According to the preface of the 1864 number, this first volume was such a success that it 'electrified the provinces'. Certainly, its production inspired enough enthusiasm for at least five further Christmas annuals to appear. By 1867, the editor proclaims it an 'institution', describing it as an annual purgative for mouldering thoughts. Much time and trouble was evidently taken to compile the annuals, each volume being carefully written out in uniform, ruled notebooks in the different hands of the many contributors. While often sentimental, the spirit of good humour in which they were composed shines through in the frequent in-jokes, self-deprecatory asides from the editor, and - not least of all -  the generous salutations and compliments for the festive season.

1864: frontispiece 
The 1864 annual attributes this photograph of the Chemistry Laboratory to a Professor Dlonadi  who 'carries back with him to Venice a cartload of thanks for his shadow of a laboratory'

The Chemistry Laboratory was based at Shuttle Street off the High Street; it was sited outside the college walls because of the fear of fire. Set up in 1831 under the first Professor of Chemistry, Thomas Thomson, this was the first modern laboratory in Great Britain in which instruction in Analytical and Practical Chemistry was systematically given to students. The lab was open daily from 9.30 to 4.30 for teaching chemical analysis and the application of chemistry to medicine and the arts. According to the 1863 University Calendar, 'each student  works independently. He is supplied with a table, gas, re-agents, etc, and goes through a regular series of analytical experiments of gradually increasing difficulty, until he is capable of performing a complex analysis. The more advanced students engage in original investigation'.

1863: page 111

1865: page 162

The books are also interesting  for including occasional photographs of the old college on the High Street. The last annual was, in fact, produced just prior to the University's move to Gilmorehill, and feelings of regret and nostalgia for the old site and its traditions and buildings are evident from several comments in the later volumes. Accompanying the photograph here, for example, are the emotive lines from The Tempest slightly misquoted to read 'Our cloud capp'd towers, our gorgeous palaces ...' . Speaking some years after the move, Ferguson summed up such nostalgia in describing 'the dreary, dingy, quaint quadrangles, so quiet, so refreshing, of the Old College in the High Street'. But while the editorial of the 1869 volume asks 'shall the new university dare to hope for a future as grand as the past days of the old College, and shall it rear within its walls names as worthy of a niche in the monument of fame as its parent has done?' it also acknowledges that 'we must not get sentimental over the old College... If a man's word is to be trusted, everybody will be glad to leave the High Street'. In fact, the buildings were  too small for student numbers, the fabric was decaying and the area was polluted: the new buildings at Gilmorehill formally opened on 7 November 1870. No Christmas annuals were apparently produced (or at least survive) from the new Chemistry Laboratory.