late Professor of Practical Astronomij in Glasgow. 3 



tlons falling upon a white ground within. But Mr Wilson as 

 yet was too far separated from the great world, and had too 

 little experience for bringing forward to the notice of the pub- 

 lic any novelty of this kind ; and soon after, a similar combi- 

 nation of glasses, with additional improvements, occurred to 

 Mr Lieberkuhn, and was at length received as a very curious 

 enlargement of the optical apparatus. 



It was also, whilst employing himself in such researches, that 

 Mr Wilson proposed to many of his philosophical friends the 

 idea of burning at a great distance by means of plain mirrors, 

 so situated as to throw the rays of the sun upon the same area, 

 without the smallest knowledge of such a thing ever having 

 been imagined by any person before him. But, wanting the 

 means of providing himself with any costly apparatus, the mat- 

 ter was pursued no farther ; and it is well known that M. de 

 Buffon, some years afterwards, when equally uninformed of 

 what Kircher had thought of, hit upon the same conception. 

 In 1747, by a magnificent construction far beyond the reach 

 of Mr Wilson's finances, the French philosopher showed what 

 might be done in this way, and with such effect as to render 

 the famous secret imputed to Archimedes, of setting on fire the 

 Roman galleys, much less apocryphal than it had ever been 

 considered before his time. 



In 1737 Mr Wilson departed from St Andrews, and by the 

 advice of his friends went to London, in order to seek for em- 

 ployment as a young person who had been bred to the medical 

 profession. Soon after his arrival there, he engaged himself 

 with a French refugee, a surgeon and apothecary of good cha- 

 racter, who received him into his family, giving him the charge 

 of his shop, and of some of his patients, with a small annual 

 salary. About twelve months after he had been fixed in this 

 new situation, Mr David Gregory, professor of mathematics 

 at St Andrews, coming to London, introduced him to Dr 

 Charles Stewart, physician to Archibald Duke of Argyle, then 

 Lord Isla. Dr Stewart received him with great kindness, and 

 not long after made him known to Lord Isla, who very soon 

 was pleased to bestow upon him marks of his attention and fa- 

 vour. In his interviews with this nobleman, Mr Wilson had 

 his curiosity much gratified by some valuable astronomical and 



