LINXKAX SOCIETY OF LOKDOX. 3$ 



Huggins, " the deep grief of a large circle of friends, and a noble 

 example of unwearied devotion to the successful prosecution of 

 scientific work, notwithstanding great physical infirmity." 



Born in London, May 24th, 1818, and brought up at Oakfield, 

 Highgate, G. B. Buckton was the eldest son of a large family, his 

 father, George Buckton, being Proctor of the Prerogative Court 

 of Canterbury, and his mother, Eliza, the daughter of Kichard 

 Merricks, Chichester, Deputy-Lieutenant of the County of Sussex. 



About the age of five years, Bucliton sustained an accident 

 which crippled him for life, a misfortune which he always bore 

 with courage and silence, but which a man of his strong build and 

 active temperament must have felt acutely. Unfitted thus for 

 public school and University life, he was educated by the Eev. 

 Oliver Lodge, Eector of Barking, and the Eev. D. Meuse, formerly 

 head-master of the Cholmondeley School, Highgate. Popular with 

 his class-mates, he shared their escapades, and was often carried 

 " pick-a-back" by some strong fellow on daring excursions. 



Left a good deal to himself, he became a fair classical scholar, 

 and read widely. He showed a marked taste for music and 

 painting, which remained his favourite pleasures to the end of 

 ins life. He evinced also remark-able powers of inventive construc- 

 tion in illustrating his youthful lectures on scientific subjects. 



While scarcely more than a boy he made the acquaintance of 

 Thomas Bell, who lived at Hornsey, and became his close friend for 

 more than forty years. Stimulated by Prof. Bell, he became an 

 earnest student of natural history. With a pony he roamed the 

 Highgate Woods and their neighbourhood, and made careful and 

 verv complete collections of bees, shells, butterflies, and birds ; most 

 of the latter he shot and prepared with his own hands. He became 

 also a good fisherman, and visited the rivers of Scotland and of 

 Ireland. Always keenly alive to the interest of allied issues, his 

 enjoyment of w-orks on astronomy led him, quite early, to grind 

 telescopic specula. Fi'ankland. with whom he afterwards became 

 intimate, vied with him in being the first to produce specula on 

 glass, which method had been lately invented by the Prench philo- 

 sopher, Foucault. Subsequently he worked specula of 12 inches 

 diameter, and, as an amateur, mounted these equatorially. 



When, on the death of his father, he moved into London, 

 he built a circular observatory on the leads of his house, and 

 made and mounted more than one telescope. It was about this 

 time that he became the pupil, friend, and assistant of Professor 

 A. Hof maim at the Eoyal College of Chemistry. His first recorded 

 scientific paper was " Observations on the deportment of Diplato- 

 somine with Cyanogen," which was published by the Chemical 

 Society, 1852, and translated into Prench and German periodicals. 

 A succession of other papers followed, notably one on his discovery 

 and isolation of the radical Mercuric jNCethyl (Eoyal Society's 

 * Proceedings,' 18-57). The last of the series, worked out with the 

 collaboration of William Odling, was upon Aluminium Compounds, 



LIXN. SOC. PKOCEEDIXGS. — SESSIOIN' 1905-1906. d 



