Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 317 



cation, or in any specification of the letters patent for the whole, 

 or for any part or parts of the said United Kingdom, granted during 

 the said thirty years, but expired, or made void j always provided, 

 that in such publication, or in such specification, the said manufac- 

 ture has been so described, as to enable manufacturers, or intelli- 

 gent operatives employed by them, to make, or to use and practise, 

 the said manufacture. 



That any manufacture, which may otherwise be accounted new, 

 according to the foregoing description, shall be so accounted, al- 

 though the novelty shall consist only in a new combination of pre- 

 viously known parts, or only in a new improvement j but, in such 

 cases, the exclusive privilege shall be confined to the new combi- 

 nation, or to the new improvement. 



DEATH OF THOMAS ALLAN, ESQ., OF LAURISTON, F.R.S. L. & E. 

 F.L.S. &C &C. 



The friends of Mr. Allan will receive with deep regret, and those 

 who saw him so lately at the Cambridge Meeting of the British 

 Association, not without surprise, the intelligence of his death ; for 

 though evidently declining in health, yet there was nothing then to 

 indicate that the termination of his earthly career was so near at 

 hand. After returning to Edinburgh, he again left that city early 

 in September, attended by some members of his family ; and when 

 on a visit to his friend Mr. Bigge, of Linden Hall, Northumberland, 

 was suddenly attacked with apoplexy, and died there, on the 12th 

 ult., in the 57th year of his age. 



The claim of Mr. Allan to be honourably remembered by the 

 cultivators of science, rests mainly on his extensive and accurate 

 knowledge of mineralogy, and on his contributions to its advance- 

 ment. He was thoroughly acquainted with the system of external 

 characters, and most skilful in applying them to the discovery of 

 those minute resemblances and differences on which the classifica- 

 tion of minerals is founded. Instances of his skill must be in the 

 memory of those who intimately knew him. It may be sufficient to 

 notice his sagacious discrimination from Gadolinite, of the mineral 

 to which the name of Allanite was afterwards given by the eminent 

 chemist who analysed it*. The collection formed by Mr. Allan, 

 though by no means the largest, was undoubtedly the best-selected 

 and the most instructive in the kingdom. It was also admirably 

 arranged, partly by himself and partly by Mr. Haidinger ; and the 

 latter derived, for his Work explanatory of the System of Mohs,many 

 of his descriptions and figures from the fine specimens in Mr. Allan's 

 cabinet. These treasures Mr. Allan delighted to lay open, not for 

 the gratification of vanity (with which no man was ever more entirely 

 unstained), but for the higher purposes of communicating know- 

 ledge, and of receiving information in return. 



Mr. Allan was one of those who early espoused the Huttonian 

 Theory of the Earth. He was struck with the beauty of that happy 



* Dr. Thomson. 



