lation who was involved in unex pected difficulties, to procure him some government situation, Dr. Wollaston's reply, was, "I have lived to sixty without asking a single favour from men in office, and it is not, after that age, that I shall be induced to do so, even to serve a brother: if the inclosed can be of use to you in your present difficulties, pray accept it, for it is much at your service." The enclosed was a cheque for ten thousand pounds. Some curious anecdotes are told respecting the resolute manner in which Dr. Wollaston uniformly resisted the intrusion of either friend or stranger into his workshop. Among others, it is related, that a gentleman of his acquaintance, having been left by the servant to ramble from one room to another, till he should be ready to see him, penetrated into the laboratory. The doctor, on coming in, discovered the intrusion: but not suffering himself to express all he felt on the occasion, took his friend by the arm, and having led him to the most sacred spot in the room, said, "Mr. P., do you see that furnace ?"-"I do.”- "Then make a profound bow to it, for as this is the first, it will also be the last time of your seeing it." Dr. Wollaston was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1793, and was elected Second Sccretary Nov. 30th, 1806. His communications to the Philosophical Transactions commenced in 1797, and amount to the following numerous list : In 1797, "On the Gout, and Urinary Concretions;" in 1800, "On Double Images caused by Atmospherical Refraction;" in 1801, "Experiments on the Chemical Production and Agency of Electricity;" in 1802, "A Method of examining Refractive and Dispersive Powers by Prismatic Reflection," and a paper "On the Oblique Refraction of Iceland Crystal;" in 1803, the Bakerian lecture, consisting of "Observations on the Quantity of Horizontal Refraction; with a Method of measuring the Dip at Sea;" in 1804, a paper "On a new Metal found in crude Plate;" in 1805 another, "On the discovery of Palladium, with Observations on other Substances found with Platina;" in 1806, the Ba kerian lecture, "On the force of Percussion;" in 1807, an "Essay on Fairyrings;" in 1808, three "On Platina and Native Palladium from Brazil," "On the Identity of Columbium and Tantalum,” and a “Description of a Reflective Goniometer;" in 1810, the Croonian lecture, "On Muscular Action, Sea Sickness, and the salutary Effects of Exercise on Gestation ;" and an Essay "On Cystic Oxide, a new Species of Non-existence of Sugar in the Blood of Urinary Calculus;" in 1811, "On the Persons labouring under Diabetes Mellitus;" in 1812, two papers "On the Primitive Crystals of Carbonate of Lime, Bitter Spar, and Iron Spar," and "On a Periscopic Camera Obscura and Microscope;" in 1813, the Bakerian lecture,On the Elementary Particles of certain Crystals;" the explanation of "A Method of drawing extremely fine Wires," and "A Description of a Single-lens Microscope;" in 1820, articles "On the Methods of Cutting Rock Crystal for Micrometers," and "On Sounds inaudible by certain Ears." Dr. Wollaston communicated, in 1815, to Thomson's Annals of Philosophy, "A Description of an Elementary Galvanic Battery;" and to the Philosophical Magazine, in 1816, "Observations and Experiments on the Mass of Native Iron found in Brazil." for Within the last session only, in the midst of which his decease occurred, five essays by Dr. Wollaston were read before the Royal Society. The first was the Bakerian lecture, "On a Method of rendering Platina Malleable;" which, on their last anniversary, November 30th, 1828, the Royal Society awarded to the inventor one of the royal medals. The subjects of the remainder were "On a Microscopic Double ;" "On a Differential Barometer;" "On a Method of comparing the Light of the Sun with that of the Fixed Stars ;" and "On the Water of the Mediterranean." The following honourable eulogy on Dr. Wollaston was pronounced by the President of the Royal Society, on the anniversary mecting upon the 1st of December, 1828. Having announced that the council of the Royal Society had awarded one of the royal medals of the year to Mr. Encke, "for his researches and calculations respecting the heavenly body usually distinguished by his name," Mr. Gilbert thus proceeded :— "The other royal medal has been awarded by your council for a communication made under circumstances the most interesting and most afflicting. An individual, of whom not the Society alone, but all England, is justly proud, whose merits have been appreciated and distinguished by each of the eminently scientific establishments of Europe, has recently been assailed by a malady, one of the most severe to which human nature is exposed. But the energies of his mind soaring beyond bodily infirmities, he has employed them in a manner (I will presume to say) most acceptable to the Divinity, because most usefully to mankind, by imparting, through the medium of this society, further stores of knowledge to the world, which has been so frequently before illuminated by the splendour of his genius. On the first day of our meeting a paper from Dr. Wollaston was read, descriptive of the processes and manipulations by which he has been enabled to supply all men of science with the most important among the recently discovered metals. Platinum, possessed of various qualities useful in an eminent degree to chemists, even on a large scale, withheld them all by resisting fusion in the most intense heat of our wind furnaces. Alloy ed, indeed, with arsenic, it became susceptible of receiving ornamental forms; but a continued heat expelled the volatile metal, and left the other in a state wholly unfit for use. Dr. Wollaston, instead of alloying, purified the platinum from every admixture by solution, consolidated its precipitate by pressure, by heating, and by percussion, so as to effect a complete welding of the mass, thus made capable of being rolled into leaf, or drawn into wire of a tenacity intermediate between those of iron and gold. To these scientific and beautiful contrivances we owe the use of a material, not only of high importance to refined chemistry, but now actually employed in the largest manufactories for distilling an article of commerce so abundant and so cheap as sulphuric acid. And above all, we owe to them the material which, in the skilful hands of some members of this society, has mainly contributed to their producing a new species of glass, which promises to form an epoch in the history of optics. Your council have, therefore, deemed themselves bound to express their strong approbation of this interesting memoir (independently of all extraneous circumstances,) by awarding a royal medal to its author. And they anticipate with confidence a general approbation, in both these instances, of what they have done." Of the Geological Society, Dr. Wollaston became a member in 1812: he was frequently elected on the council, and was for some time one of the vice-presidents. He made no contributions to the publications of that learned body; but he was well acquainted with the scope of their inquiries, and always attended to the geological phenomena of the countries which he visited in his excursions. At the annual meeting of the Society, February 20, 1829, Dr. Fitten, the president, remarked, that "though Dr. Wollaston did not publish any thing on the more immediate subjects of our pursuit, his success in the cultivation of other branches of knowledge has conduced, in no small degree, to the recent advancement of geology. The discovery of two new metals was but a part of his contributions to chemical science; and his application of chemistry to the examination of very minute quantities, by means of the simplest apparatus, divested chemical inquiry of much of its practical difficulty, and greatly promoted mineralogy. His Camera Lucida is an acquisition of peculiar value to the geologist, as it enables those who are unskilled in drawing to preserve the remembrance of what they see, and gives a fidelity to sketches hardly attainable by other means. The adaptation of measurement by reflection to the purposes of crystallography, by the invention of his goniometer, introduced into that department of science a certainty and precision which the most skilful observers were before unable to attain ; and his paper on the distinctions of the carbonates of lime, magnesia, and iron, affords one of the most remarkable instances that can be mentioned, of the advantage arising from the union of crystallography with chemical research. He was, in fact, a mineralogist of the first order, if the power of investigating accurately the characters and composition of minerals be considered as the standard of skill. Palladium and rhodium. "Possessing such variety of knowledge, with the most inventive quickness and sagacity in its application to new purposes, Dr. Wollaston was at all times accessible to those whom he believed to be sincerely occupied in useful inquiry: he seemed, indeed, himself to delight in such communications: and his singular dexterity and neatness in experiment rendered comparatively easy to him the multiplied investigations arising from them, which to others might have been oppressive or impracticable. His penetration and correct judgment, upon subjects apparently the most remote from his own immediate pursuits, made him, during many of the latter years of his life, the universal arbiter on questions of scientific difficulty; and the instruction thus derived from communication with a man of his attainments has had an effect on the progress of knowledge in this country, and on the conduct of various public undertakings, the value of which it would be difficult to estimate, and the loss of which it is at present, and long will be, quite impossible to supply." Towards the latter part of 1828, Doctor Wollaston became dangerously ill of the disorder of which he died. Feeling that the duration of his life was precarious, he devoted his numbered hours to communicate, by dictation, and thereby to preserve all the discoveries and improvements which he had made; and, a short time before his death, he wrote a letter to the secretary of the Royal Society, informing him that he had that day invested in the funds, in the name of the Royal Society, stock to the amount of 1000l., the interest of which he wished to be employed in the encouragement of experiments in natural philosophy. When he was nearly in the last agonies, one of his friends having observed, loud enough for him to hear, that he was not at the time conscious of what was passing around him, he immediately made a sign for a pencil and paper, which were given him; he then wrote down some figures, and, after casting up the sum, returned them. The amount was right. Dr. Wollaston's death occurred on the 22nd of December, 1828. A medical inquiry was instituted after his decease, respecting its immediate cause; and from the published report it appears, that an effusion of blood had taken place in the ventricles of the brain, which exhibited a very remarkabf appearance. The great body o the optic nerve was converted into a tumour of the size of a hen's egg, was of a greyish. colour, and firmer than the brain itself. In the inside it was found to be of a brown colour, soft, and in a halfdissolved state. The nerve contained scarcely any of its proper substance. Dr. Wollaston was never married. At the time of his death he was senior fellow of Gonville and Caius College. His remains were interred at Chisclhurst, in Kent. The funeral was, according to his particular request, exceedingly private, as he had desired that it should be attended only by the descendants of his grandfather. MEMOIR of MAJOR ALEXANDER GORDON LAING. Major Laing was the eldest son of Mr. William Laing, A. M., and was born at Edinburgh the 27th of December, 1794. His father having for many years had an academy in the New Town of Edinburgh, young Laing received nearly the whole of his education under the paternal roof, till, at the early age of thirteen, he entered the Alma Mater of his native city. With a view to habituate him to communicate that knowledge to others which he so eagerly acquired himself, Laing went, in his fifteenth year, to fill, for a time, the situation of assistant to Mr. Bruce, an eminent teacher in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; whence he returned to Edinburgh six months after, and entered upon a similar duty under his father. At this period nothing appeared to be farther from his intention than the active, bustling and adventurous life of a soldier, or the still more hazardous and arduous employment of a professional traveller in the unexplored regions of inhospitable Africa. Placed as he then was with the prospect, upon his father's retirement (an event which occurred a few years afterwards), of succeeding to his establishment and profession, which, though no doubt abundantly laborious, was calculated to yield a comfortable and respectable maintenance, he had thus every inducement to follow it out; or, with his predilection for study, if he did relinquish that pursuit, he was more likely to become a candidate for fame in the peaceful paths of science, than in the field. Circumstances, however, occurred, which aroused in him that spirit of enterprise and adventure which characterised his after-life. It was his fate to emerge into the world at a time when the profession of arms was every where blended with that of the civilian; and when it was considered that every man in Britain was in duty bound to bear a sword or a firelock, and to know how to use it. During that rage of martial fever, Master Laing having attained his seventeenth year, was, in 1810, appointed an ensign in the Prince of Wales's Edinburgh Volunteers. Captivated with the slight foretaste of military service which the volunteer system afforded him, he could no longer submit to the restraints, or go through the monotonous routine, of school discipline; he, in fact, now regarded teaching with the most sovereign contempt, and finally gave it up, at the termination of the second year. In the year 1811 he went out to Barbadoes, where his uncle, colonel, afterwards general, Gabriel Gordon then was, with whom he remained a short time, till he obtained an ensigncy in the York Light Infantry, which regiment he immediately joined at Antigua; and in two years thereafter, he was promoted to a lieutenancy in the same corps, which he held until the regiment was reduced, and lieutenant Laing was then placed upon the half-pay. Having no relish for inactive life, he exchanged, as speedily as the business could be negociated, into the second WestIndia regiment, which he joined at Jamaica. While there, he had to undertake the duties of deputy quarter-master-general, the exertions of which department induced a liver complaint; and in order to re-establish his health, the medical gentlemen recommended a sea voyage. He accordingly sailed to Honduras, by which his complaint was considerably relieved; but the governor, colonel Arthur, finding him an active and intelligent officer, appointed him to the office of fortmajor, and would not suffer him to return to Jamacia, but had him attached to another division of his regiment, then in Honduras, where he remained until a return of his complaint forced him to come home, his frame being so much debilitated that he was unable to walk, and it became necessary to carry him on shipboard. The effects of this attack made a serious impression on his constitution, and in consequence he remained for nearly eighteen months with his friends in Scotland. During this time, however, onehalf of the second West-India regiment, that to which he was attached, was reduced, and he was again placed upon half-pay. In the Autumn of 1819 he returned to London, and having been sent for by the late sir Henry Torrens, then colonel of his regiment, was appointed lieutenant and adjutant, and proceeded to Sierra Leone. Early in January, 1822, lieutenant Laing was sent by the late governor, sir Charles M'Carthy, on an embassy to Kambia and the Mandingo country, to ascertain the political state of those districts, the disposition of the inhabitants to trade, and their sentiments in regard to the abolition of the slavetrade. Having executed that mission to the complete satisfaction of the governor, and some alarm having arisen as to the fate of Sannassee, a chief in amity with our government, who had been taken prisoner by Yarradee, a war man of the king of Soolima, lieutenant and adjutant Laing,-though his health, which had suffered from |