214 MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, AND 



nor does he appear to have ever proceeded far enough to be 

 able to assign a cause for the phenomenon, or to connect it 

 with any fundamental idea. 



He was the founder of the systematic study of stcechiome- 

 try, he was an illustrator of one of its important laws, apd a 

 defender of regularity in nature. His scientific life was 

 laborious, his love of science sincere, and in all respects he 

 seems to have been a man of high character. After reading 

 his works, and coming occasionally on a sentence which 

 makes us for the moment believe that he has discovered a 

 greater law than we can give to him, and finding that during 

 his whole life he was just on the point of the present atomic 

 laws, one feels that he was perhaps the only man that deserved 

 to discover them, having given himself up entirely to that 

 purpose. It is with regret, therefore, that I leave him also, 

 another combatant who died before the victory. 



It has been said that Dalton had read Richter, and had 

 never acknowledged his claims. It is a melancholy thing to 

 see men of talent and learning so readily distrusting their own 

 class, as if dishonesty were so common. I might say the 

 same of Richter, that for more than ten years he continued 

 to publish on stoechiometry, and never once mentioned Hig- 

 gins, but his whole works shew that he did not see Higgins's 

 writings, or he would have probably got less involved than 

 he did. We learn from Dr. Henry that Dalton had seen 

 Richter's results on reciprocal proportion,* and had received 

 assistance from them, but although they may have assisted 

 him in proving his laws, Richter could never have given him 



* Dr. Thomson had said the contrary; but let us take Dr. Henry's informa- 

 tion, as being an intimate friend. Dalton could not have seen Richter's whole 

 works, but probably an account of them. They are scarce in England. It 

 cost me a good deal of trouble to get one, even in Germany. The British 

 Museum does not possess a complete copy. Dalton certainly had not read 

 Higgins; and although Dr. William Henry had a copy, we may conclude from 

 his son's work that he had not seen in it the Atomic Theory, as he seems not 

 to have thought it necessary to mention its existence to Dalton. 



