Silver wire in a wooden pill box. The writing on the lid reads: 'Silver wire 0.001+/- in Made for Mr Cavendish. Given by him to Sir H. Davy & by Davy to me'.

This pill box come from a 14-drawer cabinet found in the Herschel family home in the 1950s. Collectively the contents of this and a similar cabinet seem to suggest that they were used by successive generations of the family to store specimens, material and apparatus for carrying out experiments. The 'me' referred to here was almost certainly John F.W. Herschel since both Mr Henry Cavendish (1731-1810) and Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) were dead before any of his children were born.