1843.] Linnean Society. 375 



antiquities, genealogy and heraldry, particularly those of the counties 

 of Lancaster and Chester. 



In science his tastes had earlj' directed him to the sciences of 

 classification, and with marked predilection to botany, entomology, 

 and ornithology. He became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 

 1799; and was one of the founders and the first President of the 

 Natural History Society of Manchester. He was zealously active 

 in enriching the museum of the latter Society with rare specimens, 

 and in promoting the erection of suitable apartments for their pre- 

 servation and display. His library was adorned with the most costly 

 illustrated w^orks in natural history. Indeed his dominant passion, 

 the love of books, might be traced in his infinitely greater familiarity 

 with the literature of the natural sciences than with actual objects 

 and specimens. Among the essays which he read before the Philo- 

 sophical Society of Manchester were some on questions of natural 

 history, as 



1797. On the Colour of Negroes, with illustrations of the Law of 



Habit. 



1798. On the Distribution and Physiology of the Nerves of the 



Heart. 



1801. An Entomological Fragment. 



1803. On the Existence of the Unicorn. 



None of these have been discovered in his repositories. He de- 

 clined permitting any of them to appear in the Manchester Memoirs, 

 i-ather destining them to furnish the subject of an evening's discussion, 

 than regarding them as valuable additions to the then state of know- 

 ledge. His attainments in zoology are pronounced by good judges to 

 have been accurate and comprehensive ; but it does not appear that 

 there was any special province which he had cultivated with strong 

 preference and prominent success. Nature had endowed him with a 

 memory no less "remarkable for the tenaciousness of its grasp than 

 for the readiness of its responses, when invoked. What he had once 

 read or heard remained with him through life, as if engraven on 

 tablets of brass or marble. This faculty rendered him distinguished 

 service in the studies of natural history ; but there is nothing to 

 show that his power of observation was at all of commensurate 

 vigour or activity. It is impossible to claim for him rank as an 

 original cultivator of any branch of natural history. Perhaps the 

 full occupation of his time in the engrossing exercise of his profession 

 might be pleaded as a valid apology. But from tracing the same 

 indisposition to original mental efforts, at least in the form of per- 

 manent written fruits, throughout his entire intellectual career, pro- 



