HENRY CLIFTON SORBY. 925 



the most important is that on vanadium. He says: "This is cer- 

 tainly the best piece of work I ever did and I do not know that I ever 

 enjoyed anything of an intellectual kind more thoroughly." * * * "The 

 subject aroused very general attention throughout the scientific 

 world, and my view concerning the relationships of the metal was 

 universally adopted." 



His "Lessons in Elementary Chemistry" was published in 1866. 

 Up to 1906 the number of copies sold was 211,000. Translations 

 appeared in German, Russian, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Swedish, 

 Japanese, and even in one of the Indian vernaculars, Urdu. His 

 primer also had a wide sale. The well-known " Treatise on Chemistry " 

 by Roscoe and Schorlemmer is unquestionably the best English treatise 

 on chemistry and certainly one of the best in any language. 



Roscoe was elected to Parliament in 1885 and then resigned his 

 professorship. Since that time his activities have not been displayed 

 especially in the field of Chemistry. He continued, however, to exert 

 a strong influence upon educational matters. After his retirement 

 from Parliament he and his wife lived in what he called "the most 

 beautiful and healthy spot in the whole of Surrey, namely, at Wood- 

 cote Lodge." It was here that his life ended suddenly and ideally. 



Ira Remsen. 



HENRY CLIFTON SORBY (1826-1908) 



Foreign Honorary Member in Class II, Section 1, 1892. 



Henry Clifton Sorby, who, in an address sent him in 1907 by many 

 leading petrographers, was called "The Father of Microscopical 

 Petrography" was born in 1826 and died in 1908 in his eighty-second 

 year. From the age of 20 his long life was devoted to scientific re- 

 search, mainly in geology, petrography and mineralogy, unhampered 

 by any professional duties and assisted by a moderate but sufficient 

 competence. He prepared in 1849 what was probably the first 

 transparent microscopic section of a rock, and in 1850 his first paper 

 illustrating the new method by the study of sedimentary rocks was 

 published. This attracted little attention, and it was eight years 

 later that the classic memoir on which his fame as a pioneer principally 



