1865.] OBITUARY — DR. FALCONER. 137 



tinguished father, and taking advantage of the best telescope 

 mounted in so high a southern latitude, he explored with searching 

 scrutiny the great nebula of Orion, a work which he pursued with 

 untiring zeal and anxiety in his latter days ; and while we fear his 

 waning strength may have left it incomplete in form, we are as- 

 sured, and rejoice in the assurance, that abundant ability remains 

 in the observatory to prepare it for publication. 



We might dwell much longer on his astronomical history, but 

 the necessary brevity of this notice requires that we should turn to 

 his private life. It is rare indeed, that so many virtues are blend- 

 ed in any man. His innocent unpretending manners, the per- 

 fect absence of every air of vanity or pretension, crowned with an 

 unwavering Christian faith and deep sense of religious obligation 7 

 secured for him, not the mere respect, but the kindest regard of all 

 who had the happiness of his acquaintance. — Sillimari s Journal. 



Biographical Notice of the late Hugh Falconer, 

 M.D., &c. &c. — Hugh Falconer was one of those rare men, — an 

 original discoverer ; and his life is deserving of a larger record, 

 than that of a man who gains the popular fame of a discoverer by 

 writing of other men's labors. 



On the 29th of February 1808, Hugh Falconer was born 

 at Forres, in the north of Scotland, a town best known from 

 its traditional connection with the ' blasted heath ' of Macbeth. 

 He received his early education at the grammar school of Forres, 

 and afterwards studied arts for four years at the University of 

 King's College, Aberdeen, and medicine for four years at the 

 University of Edinburgh. From the former University he 

 received the degree of A.M., and from the latter, in 1829, the 

 degree of M.D. As a boy, he had exhibited a decided taste for 

 the study of natural objects, which he eagerly followed up in 

 Edinburgh under the systematic tuition of Profs. Graham and 

 Jameson. Qualified for the practice of medicine by the diplomas 

 of the Eoyal College of Surgeons and of the University of Edin- 

 burgh, he was nominated to an appointment as assistant-surgeon 

 on the Bengal Establishment. But not having attained the 

 required age of twenty-two years, and the real bent of his mind 

 being upon natural history, he devoted the compulsory interval to 

 assisting the late Dr. Nathaniel Wallich, in the distribution of his 

 great Indian herbarium, and to the study of geology and palaeon- 

 tology. The Museum of the Geological Society, under the charge 



