Obituary Notices qfDr. J. Latham fy Mr. C. Macintosh. 215 



in the year 1766. His father, George Macintosh, a native of Ross- 

 shire, was a merchant in that city ; and his mother was Mary 

 Moore, daughter of the Rev. Charles Moore, minister of Stirling. 

 Mr. George Macintosh first introduced the process of dyeing the 

 Turkey, or Adrianople red into Britain, and was much esteemed by 

 his fellow citizens for his charitable disposition and active benevo- 

 lence. Charles Macintosh's paternal uncle, William Macintosh, 

 obtained some notoriety about the year 1782, by the publication of 

 Travels in the East, in which he first propounded the greater part of 

 those principles of legislation which have since been adopted in the 

 government of our Indian Empire; and his maternal uncle was 

 Dr. John Moore, the well-known author of ' Zeluco ' and other 

 literary works of eminence, and father of the celebrated General 

 Sir John Moore. 



Charles Macintosh received the rudiments of his education at the 

 Grammar-school of Glasgow, where he was distinguished for docility 

 of disposition and quickness of parts. From Glasgow he was re- 

 moved to a school at Catterick in Yorkshire ; but, being destined for 

 mercantile life, he was early placed in the counting-house of Mr. 

 Glasford at Glasgow, then one of the first merchants of the day, 

 where he probably acquired that accuracy in the transaction of 

 business details for which he was in after-life remarkable. From a 

 strong bent towards the pursuit of science, he also about this time, 

 1782, became a student in the University of Glasgow, and for 

 several sessions attended the chemical lectures of the celebrated 

 Dr. Black. It would appear that Black had remarked his assiduity 

 and aptitude for the study of chemistry, for he was accustomed to 

 detain young Macintosh after the dismissal of the evening classes, 

 and, walking with him to and fro in the cloisters of the old court of 

 the University, he examined him strictly on the subject of his pre- 

 vious prelections ; directing his attention to points of importance, 

 and explaining those of difficulty in the science as it then stood. 

 When Dr. Black was removed to Edinburgh, Macintosh became the 

 pupil of his successor Irvine, with whom he soon became as great 

 a favourite as he had been with Black. Whilst as yet a mere boy 

 he contributed to Curtis's ' Flora Londinensis ' the account of some 

 experiments on the culture of woad and madder, and on the mode 

 of dyeing with the same. He seems at this time to have been also 

 a botanical student of the University, and to have made many ex- 

 cursions in the neighbourhood of Glasgow in search of specimens ; 

 but it was in the branch of chemical investigation that he was 

 destined to become more conspicuous. The experiments which he 

 afterwards made in the application of incinerated Algae, as a ma- 

 nure, and which are related by Dr. Greville in his account of the 

 British Algae, come more under the head of chemical than of 

 botanical research. In order to perfect him in a knowledge of the 

 French language, the subject of this notice was afterwards removed 

 to the house of a Catholic clergyman in Champagne, with whom he 

 resided for some time, and acquired a facility in speaking and 

 writing French, which he retained through life. 



