144 Royal Society. 



raittee of Public Safety to superintend the establishments for that pur- 

 pose ; and his chemical knowledge so greatly improved the method 

 followed in its manufacture, as in a very short time to make the 

 produce greatly exceed the demand. He was made Ministre de 

 I'Interieur by Napoleon, and continued under the Empire to fill many 

 important situations. He was the author of considerable works on 

 chemistry, on the application of chemistry to the arts, on the appli- 

 cation of chemistry to agriculture, on the art of making wines, and 

 on the art of dyeing cotton and wool, which are written in a very 

 perspicuous and elegant style, and which have enjoyed a very con- 

 siderable popularity in France. The labours of his whole life, in 

 fact, were devoted to the improvement of those manufactures whose 

 perfection depended more or less upon the most correct and econo- 

 mical application of chemical principles; and, after his distinguished 

 countryman Berthollet, he must be placed in the first rank of those 

 who have benefited the arts through the medium of chemical 

 science. 



Francois Xavier Baron de Zach was born at Pesth, in Hungary, 

 in 1754. His taste for astronomy was decided at the early age of 

 fifteen, by the interest which he took in the observation of the comet 

 of 17G9, and by the transit of Venus over the disc of the sun in the 

 same year, a memorable event which served to make more than one 

 important convert to the science of astronomy. After travelling 

 with scientific views through different countries of Europe, and re- 

 siding for several years in England, where he acquired for our man- 

 ners and institutions an attachment which continued throughout his 

 life, he settled at Gotha, in 178G, in the family of the Duke of Saxe 

 Gotha, who charged him with the construction of the Observatory 

 at Seeberg, over which he continued to preside for a considerable 

 period. He published at Gotha, in 1792, Tables of the Sun, with a 

 Catalogue of 381 Stars, and he subsequently published many other 

 important astronomical Tables, particularly those on Aberration and 

 Nutation. He became in 1800 the editor of the " Monatliche Cor- 

 respondentz," a German periodical work on astronomy and geo- 

 graphy, which was subsequently published in French under the title 

 of " Correspondence Astronomique &c," upon his removal to the 

 South of France in 1813, and subsequently to Genoa in company 

 with the Duchesse de Saxe Gotha. This was a most valuable Jour- 

 nal, containing records of the progress of astronomy in every country 

 in Europe, and contributing more than any other publication to the 

 great impulse which has been given for many years to the cultiva- 

 tion of astronomical science in Germany*. In 1814 he published his 

 very interesting work on the " Attraction of Mountains." For many 

 of the later years of his life he suffered severely from the stone, and 

 he had established himself at Paris for the purpose of being eon- 



* In the Phil. Mag. vol. xvi. p. 49, will be found a paper by Baron de 

 Zach, " On the Planet Pallas," from the Monatliche Correspondentz ; and 

 in vol. Ixi. p. 353, a paper " On Repeating Circles," by the same astrono- 

 mer, from his Correspondence Astronomique. — Edit. 



