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OBITUAKY. 



Henry Clifton Sorby. 1826-1908. 



Plate XI. 



Microscopical Science, as well as this Society, has suffered a 

 serious loss by the death, on March 9, of Dr. Sorby. As President 

 of the Society, in 1875-7, he contributed to our Journal two 

 addresses of a very striking and suggestive character, while our 

 own publications, as well as those of other scientific societies, con- 

 tain many important communications from his pen, illustrating the 

 enormous value of the Microscope as an instrument of scientific 

 research. 



Sorby's life was a singularly, and happily, uneventful one. 

 Succeeding to a moderate fortune, and receiving a sound education 

 in the grammar school of his native town, supplemented by private 

 tuition, he, at a very early age, determined to devote his life to the 

 study of science ; and this devotion to scientific research was never 

 interrupted by the duties owing to a family, by the cares of a 

 business, or by the distractions of a profession. During his earlier 

 years, Sorby's interest and activities were almost entirely confined to 

 his native town of Sheffield and its scientific societies. In his later 

 years, after the death of his widowed mother, he was in the habit 

 of spending all the summer months on board his yacht, which, 

 provided as it was with Microscopes and other apparatus for re- 

 search, became a laboratory in which he carried on the multi- 

 farious investigations described in his numerous memoirs. 



At the time that he was President of this Society, Sorby wrote 

 as follows : — " My entire life has been spent either in scientific 

 research or in preparation for it " — and this statement might have 

 been justly repeated by him on his death-bed. For even during 

 the last five years of his life, while confined to his bed by a series 

 of accidents, he was actively engaged in completing and publishing 

 the results of important investigations. Nor did the manifestations 

 of his enthusiasm for research cease with the extinction of life itself 

 — for a posthumous memoir of the highest value has just appeared 

 in the Journal of the Geological Society ; while, by the terms of 

 his will, a large part of Sorby's fortune will go to the Sheffield 

 University — in the foundation of which he took such an important 

 part — and the Koyal and Geological Societies receive bequests, to 

 be devoted to the promotion of investigations of the same character 

 as those which occupied the donor during his whole life, j 



