142 Royal Society. 
In private life this eminent man was distinguished by the suavity 
and simplicity of his manners, by his elegant tastes, and domestic 
virtues *. 
Mr. JAmeEs Ivory was the son of Mr. James Ivory, watchmaker 
in Dundee, and was born in that town in the year 1765. He re- 
ceived his elementary education at the public schools of Dundee, 
and in the year 1779, was sent to the University of St. Andrews, 
where, in the period of four years, he went through a course of 
Languages, Science and Philosophy, entitling him to the Degree of 
Master of Arts, which was afterwards conferred on him. While at 
this University he was distinguished for his attainments in Mathe- 
matics, to the study of which branch of science he had, even at this 
early period of his life, particularly applied himself, under the able 
instruction of the Rev. John West, at that time assistant to the Pro- 
fessor in the University. It refleets equal credit upon the pupil 
and the instructor, that for this gentleman Mr. Ivory ever after en- 
tertained the highest regard. 
Being intended for the Church of Scotland, he now commenced 
his studies in theology, and in the prosecution of them remained 
two years at St. Andrews, after the completion of his course of Phi- 
losophy. He then removed to the University of Edinburgh ; and it 
is not a little remarkable that he should have done so with Leslie, 
who had been his fellow-student at St. Andrews. At Edinburgh, he 
received his third year’s theological instruction, necessary, by the 
regulations of the Scottish church, to qualify him for admission as 
a clergyman. His studies in divinity were not, however, prosecuted 
farther; for immediately on leaving the University of Edinburgh, 
he was, in 1786, appointed assistant-teacher in an academy then 
instituted in his native town of Dundee, for the purpose of instrue- 
tion in mathematics and natural philosophy. Having remained in 
this situation three years, he entered upon a totally different career, 
becoming a partner in, and the manager of a Flax-spinning Com- 
pany, which had its mills at Douglastown in Forfarshire, and which 
assumed the name of James Ivory and Company. 
Though now engaged in commercial and manufacturing pursuits, 
Mr. Ivory still devoted every moment of leisure to his favourite ob- 
ject, the prosecution of mathematical investigations. Living in a 
secluded part of the country, he was debarred from the advantages 
of access to libraries and the society of men of science, which a 
more favoured locality might have afforded him; but this obstacle 
to the enlargement of his knowledge was overcome by the force of 
his genius and his powers of application. With a sound knowledge 
of the geometry of the ancient and of the modern mathematics of 
his own country, he had already possessed himself of the methods 
9. Continuation of a paper on the Relations between the Nerves of 
Motion and Sensation, and the Brain; more particularly on the Structure 
of the Medulla oblongata and the Spinal Marrow. (Phil. Trans. 1835, 
255.) 
: 10. Onthe Nervous System. (Ibid. 1840, p. 245.) 
* An excellent account of the life and writings of Sir Charles Bell will 
be found in Pettigrew’s Medical Portrait Gallery, vol. iii. 
