440 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 158. 



1691 : and most certainly Mr. Thomas Barlow was 

 not identical with the Mr. Barlow (p. 147.) who 

 in 1676 invented repeating clocks. 



The Thomas Barlow of Sheffield was born in 

 1666 : he succeeded to the principal part of the 

 property of his uncle Francis Barlow in 1690. He 

 married in 1691, the year in which he had the 

 grant of arms. His wife died in 1694, and has a 

 handsome monument in the church of Eckington, 

 in Derbyshire ; Renishaw, in that parish, being for 

 a time his place of residence. He finally settled 

 at Middle Thorpe, near York, where he built for 

 himself a house after the model of villas which he 

 had seen abroad; and died in France in 1713, 

 while travelling with his son. 



His issue was one son and one daughter. The 

 daughter was baptized at Sheffield, July 20, 1692, 

 and buried there January 28, 1693. The baptism 

 of the son I have not found, but it seems probable 

 that he was born at Renishaw. His name was 

 Francis, and as Francis Barlow, of Middle Thorpe, 

 Esq., he served the office of high sheriff of the 

 county of York in 1735. His will was made 

 December 13, 1769. 



There is no reason that I know of to suppose 

 that Thomas Barlow had any other son. 



There is a monument in the chancel of the parish 

 church of Sheffield for Francis Barlow, the uncle 

 of Thomas ; and in the Table of Benefactors his 

 name appears as the founder of an annual dole, 

 ■which I believe the poor of the place still enjoy. 



The father of Thomas Barlow was named 

 Samuel, and Samuel and Francis were sons of 

 Humphrey Barlow of Sheffield, ironmonger, by 

 Dorothy his wife, daughter of Gregory and Cas- 

 sandra Sylvester, of Mansfield. Joseph Huntee. 



Edward Barlow, whose real name was Booth, 

 was born near Warrington, and ordained in the 

 English College at Lisbon. He took the name of 

 Barlow from his godfather, Ambrose Barlow, a 

 Benedictine, who suffered at Lancaster for his 

 religion. 



" He lias often," says Dodd, " told me that at his first 

 perusing of Euclid, that author was as easy to him as 

 a newspaper. His name and fame are perpetuated for 

 being the inventor of the pendulum watches ; but ac- 

 cording to the usual fate of most projectors, while 

 others were great gainers by his ingenuity, Mr. Barlow 

 had never been considered on that occasion, had not 

 Mr. Thompson (accidentally becoming acquainted with 

 the inventor's name) made him a present of 200/. He 

 published a treatise on the origin of springs, wind, and 

 the flux and reflux of the sea, 8vo. 1714, and died 

 about two years afterwards, nearly eighty-one years of 

 age." — Dodd's Church Hist, iii. 380. 



Ambrose Barlow was one of the Manchester 

 Barlows, born about 1585, and executed at Lan- 

 caster about Sept. 10, 1640. His original name 

 was Edward Barlow, but he changed his Christian 



name to Ambrose. (Chalmer's Missionary Priests, 

 ii. 91.) In the Warrington register there is this 

 entry : 



" December 1639. 

 Edward, son to Richard Booth, the 15th day." 



and assuming that Dodd is not strictly accurate 

 as to the age of Edward Barlow, this entry may 

 relate to his birth. W. Beaumont. 



OPTICAL CURIOSITIES. 



(Vol. vi., p. 198.) 



The principle involved in the optical phenome- 

 non, respecting which your correspondent C. Mans- 

 field Ingleby desires an explanation, though 

 probably known to Babtista Porta as being exactly 

 the same as that of the camera obscura invented 

 by him in 1560, and described in his Magia Natu- 

 ralis, was first satisfactorily explained by Mauro- 

 lycas in his Theoremata de Lumine et Umbra, 1575 : 



" In his work," says Professor Baden Powell {His- 

 tory of Natural Philosophy, p. 127.), "he gives an ex- 

 planation of the fact noticed by Aristotle, that the light 

 of the sun passing through a small hole, of whatever 

 shape, always gives a circular illuminated space on a 

 screen at a little distance. The rays from the different 

 parts of the sun's disk cross at the aperture (which we 

 will suppose to be, for example, triangular), and each 

 ray gives a small triangular bright spot on the screen ; 

 these being partially superposed, but arranged in the 

 form of the sun's disk, will give an image sensibly cir- 

 cular ; and the more accurately so as the hole is 

 smaller, or the screen more distant." 



In that section of his History of the Inductive 

 Sciences which Mr. Whewell has devoted to an in- 

 vestigation of the " cause of the failure of the 

 Greek school philosophy," he has made use of the 

 speculations of Aristotle upon this question, as an 

 illustration of the conclusion, that "the radical 

 and fatal defect in the physical speculations of the 

 Greek philosophical schools, was, that though they 

 possessed facts and ideas, the ideas were not dis- 

 tinct and appropriate to the facts'' Mr. Whewell 

 proceeds : 



" One of the facts which Aristotle endeavours to 

 explain is this : that when the sun's light passes through 

 a hole, whatever be the form of the hole, the bright 

 image, if formed at any considerable distance from the 

 hole, is round, instead of imitating the figure of the 

 hole, as shadows resemble their objects. We shall 

 easily perceive this appearance to be a necessary conse- 

 quence of the circular figure of the sun, if we conceive 

 light to be diffused from tiie luminary by means of 

 straight rays proceeding from every point. Ijut instead 

 of this appropriate idea of rays, Aristotle attempts to 

 explain the fact by saying that the sun's light has a 

 circular nature, which it always tends to manifest : and 

 this vague and loose conception of a circular quality 

 employed, instead of the distinct conception of rays, 

 which is really applicable, prevented Aristotle from 



