236 Biographical Memoir of the late Dr Turner. 



gentlemanly manner, with a smooth, unbroken, animated deli- 

 very, perfect fluency and precision of language, uncommon faci- 

 lity in demonstration, and a total absence of all pretension, which 

 reminded many here of the late Dr Murray in his happiest 

 days, and which strongly brought to my recollection the lectures 

 of Gay-Lussac at the time my friend and I attended him to- 

 gether in 1821. 



During his residence in Edinburgh, Dr Turner was not con- 

 tent with studying to become an efficient lecturer. He also 

 laboured to gain the more solid reputation of a chemist ; and 

 with what success will appear from the following brief summary 

 of his writings. 



His first appearance as a chemical author was in 1824, when 

 he pubhshed his " Experiments on the application of Doberei- 

 ner's recent Discovery to Eudiometry."* Professor Dohereiner 

 had announced a short time before his singular and now familiar 

 discovery of the action of spongy platinum in spontaneously 

 inflaming hydrogen gas in atmospheric air or oxygen. Dr 

 Turner inferred that this observation might be turned to ac- 

 count in Eudiometry ; and he proved by a series of apposite 

 experiments, that, by means of a little ball of platinum and clay, 

 oxvgen and hydrogen may be made to unite spontaneously, si- 

 lently, yet swiftly, in the eudiometric tube, — that this agent is 

 a far more delicate mode of discovering and measuring oxygen 

 or hydrogen than the electric spark, being adequate to detect 

 the 100th part of one gas mixed with the other, — and that it 

 gives the exact proportion of these gases in an aeriform mixture. 

 He farther investigated the eflcct of other gases in preventing 

 tlie action of the platinum, and settled all the other conditions 

 for its successful eudiometric employment. In fine, he has left 

 but little room for improvement in this department of inquiry ; 

 and his eudiometric method has ever since been currently 

 adopted as the most convenient, and most exact in a great ma- 

 jority of instances. 



Ill the same year appeared his " Analysis of Radiated Celes- 



• Edin. Phil. Journal, xi. 99, 1824. 



