water mark of the mid-Victorian materialism at its most triumphant moment.

CHEMISTS.

Richard Kirwan (b. Galway 1733, d. 1812), F. R. S. A man of independent means, he devoted himself to the study of chemistry and mineralogy and was awarded the Copley medal of the Royal Society. He published works on mineralogy and on the analysis of mineral waters, and was the first in Ireland to publish analyses of soils for agricultural purposes, a research which laid the foundation of scientific agriculture in Great Britain and Ireland.

Maxwell Simpson (b. Armagh 1815, d. 1902), F. R. S., held the chair of chemistry in Queen's College, Cork, for twenty years and published a number of papers in connection with his subject and especially with the behavior of cyanides, with the study of which compounds his name is most associated.

Cornelius O'Sullivan (b. Brandon, 1841, d. 1897), F. R. S., was for many years chemist to the great firm of Bass & Co., brewers at Burton-on-Trent, and in that capacity became one of the leading exponents of the chemistry of fermentation in the world.

James Emerson Reynolds (b. Dublin 1844), F. R. S., professor of chemistry, Trinity College, Dublin, for many years, discovered the primary thiocarbamide and a number of other chemical substances, including a new class of colloids and several groups of organic and other compounds of the element silicon.

Among others only the names of the following can be mentioned:

Sir Robert Kane (b. Dublin 1809, d. 1890), professor of chemistry in Dublin and founder and first director of the Museum of Industry, now the National Museum. He was president of Queen's College, Cork, as was William K. Sullivan (b. Cork 1822, d. 1890), formerly professor of chemistry in the Catholic University. Sir William O'Shaughnessy Brooke, F. R. S. (b. Limerick 1809, d. 1889), professor of chemistry and assay master in Calcutta, is better known as the introducer of the telegraphic system into India and its first superintendent.

BIOLOGISTS.

William Henry Harvey (b. Limerick 1814, d. 1866), F. R. S., was a botanist of very great distinction. During a lengthy residence in South Africa, he made a careful study of the flora of the Cape of Good Hope and published The Genera of South African Plants. After this he was made keeper of the Herbarium, Trinity College, Dublin, but, obtaining leave of absence, travelled in North and South America, exploring the coast from Halifax to the Keys of Florida, in order to collect materials for his great work, Nereis Boreali-Americana, published by the Smithsonian Institution. Subsequently he visited Ceylon, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and the Friendly and Fiji Islands, collecting algae. The results were published in his Phycologia Australis. At the time of his death he was engaged on his Flora Capensis, and was generally considered the first authority on algae in the world.

William Archer (b. Co. Down 1827, d. 1897), F. R. S., devoted his life to the microscopic examination of freshwater organisms, especially desmids and diatoms. He attained a very prominent place in this branch of work among men of science. Perhaps his most remarkable discovery was that of Chlamydomyxa labyrinthuloides (in 1868), "one of the most remarkable and enigmatical of all known microscopic organisms."

George James Allman (b. Cork 1812, d. 1898), F. R. S., professor of botany in Trinity College, Dublin, and afterwarls Regius Professor of natural history in the University of Edinburgh, published many papers on botanical and zoological subjects, but his great work was that on the gymnoblastic Hydrozoa, "without doubt the most important systematic work dealing with the group of Coelenterata that has ever been produced."

Amongst eminent living members of the class under consideration may be mentioned Alexander Macalister (b. Dublin 1844), F. R. S., professor of anatomy, first in Dublin and now in Cambridge, an eminent morphologist and anthropologist, and Henry Horatio Dixon (b. Dublin), F. R. S., professor of botany in Trinity College, an authority on vegetable physiology, especially problems dealing with the sap.

GEOLOGISTS.

Samuel Haughton (b. Carlow 1821, d. 1897), F. R. S., after earning a considerable reputation as a mathematician and a geologist, and taking Anglican orders, determined to study medicine and entered the school of that subject in Trinity College. After graduating he became the reformer, it might even be said the re-founder, of that school. He devoted ten years to the study of the mechanical principles of muscular action, and published his Animal Mechanism, probably his greatest work. He will long be remembered as the introducer of the "long drop" as a method of capital execution. He might have been placed in several of the categories which have been dealt with, but that of geologist has been selected, since in the later part of his most versatile career he was professor of geology in Trinity College, Dublin.

Valentine Ball (b. Dublin 1843, d. 1894), F. R. S., a brother of Sir Robert, joined the Geological Survey of India, and in that capacity became an authority not only on geology but also on ornithology and anthropology. His best known work is Jungle-Life in India. In later life he was director of the National Museum, Dublin.

MEDICAL SCIENCE.

Very brief note can be taken of the many shining lights in Irish medical science. Robert James Graves (1796-1853), F. R. S., after whom is named "Graves's Disease", was one of the greatest of clinical physicians. His System of Clinical Medicine was a standard work and was extolled by Trousseau, the greatest physician that France has ever had, in the highest terms of appreciation.

William Stokes (1804-1878), Regius Professor of Medicine in Trinity College, and the author of a Theory and Practice of Medicine, known all over the civilized world, was equally celebrated.

To these must be added Sir Dominic Corrigan (1802-1880), the first Catholic to occupy the position of President of the College of Physicians in Dublin, an authority on heart disease, and the first adequate describer of aortic patency, a form of ailment long called "Corrigan's Disease". "Colles's Fracture" is a familiar term in the mouths of surgeons. It derives its

name from Abraham Colles (1773-1843), the first surgeon in the world to tie the innominate artery, as "Butcher's Saw", a well-known implement, does from another eminent surgeon; Richard Butcher, Regius Professor in Trinity College in the seventies of the last century.

Sir Rupert Boyce (1863-1911), F. R. S., though born in London, had an Irish father and mother. Entering the medical profession, he was assistant professor of pathology at University College, London, and subsequently professor of pathology in University College, Liverpool, which he was largely instrumental in turning into the University of Liverpool. He was foremost in launching and directing the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which has had such widespread results all over the world in elucidating the problems and checking the ravages of the diseases peculiar to hot countries. It was for his services in this direction that he was knighted in 1906.

Sir Richard Quain (b. Mallow 1816, d. 1898), F. R. S., spent most of his life in London, where he was for years the most prominent physician. He wrote on many subjects, but the Dictionary of Medicine, which he edited and which bears his name, has made itself and its editor known all over the world.

Sir Almroth Wright (b. 1861), F. R. S., is the greatest living authority on the important subject of vaccino-therapy, which, indeed, may be said to owe its origin to his researches, as do the methods for measuring the protective substances in the human blood. He was the discoverer of the anti-typhoid injection which has done so much to stay the ravages of that disease.

ENGINEERING.

Bindon Blood Stoney (1828-1909), F. R. S., made his reputation first as an astronomer by discovering the spiral character of the great nebula in Andromeda. Turning to engineering, he was responsible for the construction of many important works, especially in connection with the port of Dublin. He was brother of G. J. Stoney.

Sir Charles Parsons (b. 1854), F. R. S., fourth son of the third Earl of Rosse, is the engineer who developed the steam

turbine system and made it suitable for the generation of electricity, and for the propulsion of war and mercantile vessels. If he has revolutionized traffic on the water, so on the land has John Boyd Dunlop (still living), who discovered the pneumatic tire with such wide-spread results for motorcars, bicycles, and such means of locomotion.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock (b. Dundalk 1819, d. 1907), F. R. S., was one of the great Arctic explorers, having spent eleven navigable seasons and six winters in those regions. He was the chief leader and organizer of the Franklin searches. From the scientific point of view he made a valuable collection of miocene fossils from Greenland, and enabled Haughton to prepare the geological map and memoir of the Parry Archipelago.

John Ball (b. Dublin 1818, d. 1889), F. R. S., educated at Oscott, passed the examination for a high degree at Cambridge, but, being a Catholic, was excluded from the degree itself and any other honors which a Protestant might have attained to. He travelled widely and published many works on the natural history of Europe and South America from Panama to Tierra del Fuego. He was the first to suggest the utilization of the electric telegraph for meteorological purposes connected with storm warnings.

Space ought to be found for a cursory mention of that strange person, Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859), who by his Lardner's Cyclopaedia in 132 vols., his Cabinet Library, and his Museum of Science and Art, did much to popularize science in an unscientific day.

REFERENCES:

The principal sources of information are the National Dictionary of Biography; the Obituary Notices of the Royal Society (passages in inverted commas are from these); "Who's Who" (for living persons); Healy: Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars; Hyde: Literary History of Ireland; Joyce: Social History of Ancient Ireland; Moore: Medicine in the British Isles.