Biofjraplikal Account o/Dh. Wollaston, hi/ Dk. Tiiojias Thomson. 1^7 



Iiavo seen liim write on paper and upon glass in so small a hand, that it 

 seemed to bo merely a single line drawn across; bnt when examined hy a 

 microscope it assumed the form of regular letters, distinctly visible and 

 easily read. This power he retained to the last. When he was nearly 

 in his last agonies, one of his friends having observed, loud enough for 

 him to hear, that he was not at that time conscious of what was passing 

 around him, he made a sign for a pencil and paper, which were given 

 him. He wrote down some figures, and after casting up the sum returned 

 them. The account was right. 



In the June before his death he was proposed as a member of the 

 Astronomical Society of London ; but according to the rules of that 

 Society he could not have been elected before the last meeting for the 

 year. When the Society met in November, 1828, the alarming situation 

 of his health, and the great probability of his dissolution previous to the 

 December meeting, induced the council at once to recommend to the 

 assembled members a departure from the established rule, and that the 

 election should take place at that sitting. This was done, and received 

 the unanimous sanction of the meeting, which insisted on disjiensing with 

 even the formality of a ballot. Dr. Wollastou then, within a few days of 

 his death, acknowledged this feeling and courteous act by presenting the 

 Society with a valuable telescope which he greatly prized. It originally 

 belonged to his father, and had been subsequently improved by the appli- 

 cation to it of an invention of his own, the triple achromatic object glasg 

 — a device on which astronomers set great value. 



At the death of Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Wollaston was chosen as 

 interim president from the time of that death, to the 30th November of 

 the same year, which was the usual time for the election of the president. 

 Not a few of the members were anxious that he should have succeeded 

 Sir Joseph Banks as president, but he peremptorily refused to allow him- 

 self to be put on the list of candidates. The consequence was, that Sir 

 Humphrey Davy was chosen to fill that important ofiice without opposi- 

 tion. 



Towards the latter part of 1828, Dr. Wollaston became dangerously 

 ill of the disease of the brain of which he died. Finding himself unable 

 to write out an account of such of his discoveries and inventions as he 

 was reluctant should perish with him, he spent his numbered hours in 

 dictating to an amanuensis an account of some of the most important of 

 them. 



The chief of these is indisputably his method of rendering platinum 

 malleable, which he had practised for many years upon so large a scale, 

 that he is said to have cleared thirty thousand pounds by that process 

 alone. He had ascertained the f:ict that platinum, like iron, is capable 

 of being welded. Hence he inferred that it might be converted into a 

 metallic rod or plate, susceptible, by skilful hammering, of being converted 

 to vessels of any shape or size required. As it is capable of resisting the 

 greatest heat of our furnaces, and is not acted upon by the reagents 



