Glasgow; and in 1808 he was elected, first a corresponding, and afterwards a foreign member of the Institute of France. A few years before his death it was intimated to him, by a message from Sir Joseph Banks, that, to use the words of Mr. Muirhead, the highest honour usually conferred in England on men of literature and science—namely a baronetcy, was open to him, should he desire it; but, although Watt felt flattered by this intimation, he determined, after consulting with his son, to decline the honour. Five statues have been erected to the memory of this illustrious man, of which number the one in Westminster Abbey, by Chantrey, bears on its pedestal the famous inscription by Lord Brougham : NOT TO PERPETUATE A NAME WHICH MUST ENDURE WHILE THE PEACEFUL ARTS FLOURISH BUT TO SHEW THAT MANKIND HAVE LEARNT TO HONOUR THOSE WHO BEST DESERVE THEIR GRATITUDE THE KING HIS MINISTERS AND MANY OF THE NOBLES AND COMMONERS OF THIS REALM RAISED THIS MONUMENT TO JAMES WATT WHO DIRECTING THE FORCE OF AN ORIGINAL GENIUS TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE STEAM ENGINE ENLARGED THE RESOURCES OF HIS COUNTRY AND ROSE TO AN EMINENT PLACE AMONG THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS FOLLOWERS OF SCIENCE BORN AT GREENOCK MDCCXXXVI DIED AT HEATHFIELD IN STAFFORDSHIRE MDCCCXIX. —Muirhead's Translation of Arago's Historical Eloge of James Watt. London, 1839.-Memoir, by his son J. Watt, Encyclopædia Britannica.- Quarterly Review, October, 1858. WILLIAM H. WOLLASTON, M.D., P.R.S. &c. Born August 6, 1766. Died December 22, 1828. William Hyde Wollaston was born at East Dereham, a village sixteen miles from Norwich. His father was an astronomer of some eminence, who in the year 1800 published an extensive catalogue of the northern circumpolar stars. After a preparatory education, Wollaston entered at Caius College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of M.B. in 1787, and that of M.D. in 1793; soon afterwards he became a Tancred Fellow. During his residence at Cambridge, he devoted himself more to the study of astronomy than any other science. On leaving Cambridge in 1789, he settled at Bury St. Edmunds, and began to practise as a physician, but met with so little success, that he soon removed to London. Shortly after his arrival, he became a candidate for the office of Physician to St. George's Hospital, but was defeated by the election of his principal opponent, Dr. Pemberton. It is stated that this circumstance had such an effect on Wollaston, that he declared, in a moment of pique, he would abandon the profession, and never more write a prescription, were it for his own father. This statement is, however, contradicted in a biographical notice of him, contained in the reports of the Astronomical Society, where it is affirmed that he continued to practise physic in London to the end of the year 1800, when an accession of fortune determined him to relinquish a profession he never liked, and to devote himself entirely to science, On the 9th of May, 1793, Wollaston was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; and in June, 1797, appeared his first contribution to the Philosophical Transactions,' being a paper On Gouty and Urinary Concretions.' From this period until his decease, Wollaston was a constant contributor to the 'Transactions,' as well as to various scientific journals. His papers in the 'Philosophical Transactions' amount to thirty-nine, and, in addition to strictly chemical subjects, include memoirs in astronomy, optics, mechanics, acoustics, mineralogy, crystallography, physiology, and botany. On the 30th of November, 1804, he was elected Junior Secretary to the Royal Society; and on the death of Sir Joseph Banks, in June, 1820, succeeded him in the President's chair, until the anniversary, November 30th of the same year, when he retired in favour of Sir Humphry Davy, to whom, at the election, he gave the whole weight of his influence. In the years 1804-5 Wollaston first made known to the world the existence of the two metals, palladium and rhodium, which he found were contained in the ore of platinum, associated with osmium and iridium, two metals discovered about the same time by Mr. Tennant. In 1809 he showed that the supposed new metal, tantalum, was identical with columhium, previously discovered by Mr. Hatchett; and shortly before his death, he transmitted to the Royal Society a communication, constituting the Bakerian lecture of 1828, in which he fully describes his ingenius method of rendering platinum malleable. From this invention he is stated to have acquired more than 30,000l. Dr. Wollaston's knowledge was more varied, and his tastes less exclusive, than any other philosopher of his time, except Cavendish; but optics and chemistry are the two sciences in which he made the greatest discoveries. To him we owe the first demonstration of the identity of galvanism and common electricity, and the first explanation of the cause of the different phenomena exhibited by them. Dr. Wollaston was accustomed to carry on his experiments in the greatest seclusion, and with very few instruments; he was also endowed with an extreme neatness of hand, and invented the most ingenious methods of determining the properties and constituents of very minute quantities of matter. It is related by Dr. Paris (in his Life of Davy), that a foreign philosopher once calling on Wollaston with letters of introduction, expressed a great desire to see his laboratory. "Certainly," replied Wollaston, and immediately produced a small tray, containing some glass tubes, a blowpipe, two or three watch-glasses, a slip of platinum, and a few testtubes. Another anecdote is told of him, that, having been engaged one day in inspecting a monster galvanic battery constructed by Mr. Children, he accidentally met, on his way home, a brother chemist, who knew of Mr. Children's grand machine, and uttered something about the inconvenience of it being of such an enormous size; on this Wollaston seized his friend by the button, led him into a bye corner, where, taking from his waistcoat pocket a tailor's thimble which contained a galvanic arrangement, and pouring into it the contents of a small phial, he astonished his friend by immediately heating a platinum wire to a white heat. He also produced platinum wire so extremely fine as to be nearly imperceptible to the naked eye. Towards the close of the year 1828, Wollaston became dangerously ill with disease of the brain. Feeling his end approaching, and being unable to write himself, he employed an amanuensis to write accounts of such of his discoveries and inventions as he was unwilling should perish with him; and in this manner some of his most important papers were communicated to the Royal Society. It is a curious fact, that, in spite of the extensive cerebral disease under which he laboured, his faculties continued unclouded to the very last. When almost at the point of death, one of his friends having observed, loud enough for him to hear, that he was unconscious of what was passing around him, Wollaston made a sign for pencil and paper, and then wrote down some figures, and after casting up the sum, returned the paper: the amount was found to be correct. Dr. Wollaston died on the 22nd of December, 1828, at the age of sixty-two-only a few months before his great scientific contemporaries, Sir Humphry Davy and Dr. Thomas Young. He was buried in Chiselhurst churchyard, Kent. Dr. William Henry* gives the following summary of his character: "Dr. Wollaston was endowed with bodily senses of extraordinary acuteness and accuracy, and with great general vigour of understanding. Trained in the discipline of the exact sciences, he had acquired a powerful command over his attention, and had habituated himself to the most rigid correctness both of thought and language. He was sufficiently provided with the resources of the mathematics, to be enabled to pursue with success profound enquiries in mechanical and optical philosophy, the results of which enabled him to unfold the causes of phenomena not before understood, and to enrich the arts connected with those sciences by the invention of ingenious and valuable instruments. In chemistry he was distinguished by the extreme nicety and delicacy of his observations, by the quickness and precision with which he marked resemblances and discriminated differences, the sagacity with which he devised experiments and anticipated their results, and the skill with which he executed the analysis of fragments of new substances, often so minute as to be scarcely perceptible by ordinary eyes. He was remarkable, too, for the caution with which he advanced from facts to general conclusions; a caution which, if it sometimes prevented him from reaching at once the most sublime truths, yet rendered every step of his ascent a secure station, from which it was easy to rise to higher and more enlarged inductions."— Weld's History of the Royal Society, with Memoirs of the Presidents. London, 1848.-Sketches of the Royal Society, &c., by Sir John Barrow, Bart., F.R.S. London, 1849. * Preface to Elements of Experimental Chemistry, Eleventh Edition. 145 THOMAS YOUNG, M.D., F.R.S., &c. MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. Born June 13, 1773. Died May 10, 1829. Dr. Thomas Young, celebrated for his universal attainments, was born at Milverton, in Somersetshire. He was the eldest of ten children of Thomas and Sarah Young; his mother was a niece of Dr. Richard Brocklesby, a physician of considerable eminence in London. Both of his parents were members of the Society of Friends, and to the tenets of that sect, which recognizes the immediate influence of a Supreme Intelligence as a guide in the ordinary conduct of life, Dr. Young was accustomed in after years to attribute, in no slight degree, the formation of those determined habits of perseverance which gave him the power of effecting any object upon which he was engaged, and by which he was enabled to work out his own education almost from infancy, and with little comparative assistance from others. At the age of two years Young could read with considerable fluency, and before he was four years old had read the Bible through twice, and also Watts' hymns. He was likewise from his earliest years in the habit of committing to memory pieces of poetry, in proof of which there exists a memorandum, written by Young's grandfather, on the margin of a copy of Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village,' to the effect that his grandson Thomas had repeated to him the whole poem, with the exception of a word or two, before he was five years old. In 1780 he was placed at a boarding-school at Stapleton, near Bristol, and here the deficiency of the instructor appears to have advanced the studies of the pupil, as Young now became his own teacher, and used to study by himself the last pages of the book taught almost before he had reached the middle under the eye of the master. In the year 1782 he became an inmate of the school kept by Mr. Thompson, at Crompton, in Dorsetshire, remaining there nearly four years, during which period he rapidly acquired knowledge upon various subjects. Having commenced the study of botany, he was led to attempt the construction of a microscope, with the assistance of an usher in the school of the name of Benjamin Martin, in order to examine the plants he was in the habit of gathering. In his endeavours to make the microscope Young found it necessary to procure a lathe, and for a time everything gave way to a passion for turning. This was, however, at length succeeded by a desire to become acquainted with the nature of fluxions, and after reading through and mastering a treatise upon this subject, he turned his attention to the study of Hebrew and other Oriental languages. Ultimately at the age of fourteen Thomas Young was more or less H |