Royal Society. 201 



of professional charlatanism in whatever quarter it was displayed. 

 It can excite no surprise that he stood high in the estimation of his 

 many celebrated contemporaries of the Scottish metropolis, and that 

 he should have enjoyed a cordial and continued intimacy with such 

 men as Stewart, Allen and Mackintosh. Associated with the pro- 

 jectors of the Edinburgh Review, he was a contributor to some of 

 the early numbers, of articles connected with medical philosophy. 

 In other researches of science not strictly professional. Dr. Thomson 

 evinced an erudition of greater extent and profundity than could 

 have been attained by any individual not possessing his quickness 

 of apprehension and unquenchable thirst for knowledge. 



The profession at large are perhaps scarcely aware of the extent 

 of their obligations to Dr. Thomson. Some however yet survive 

 who can attest the peculiar interest he inspired in his pupils by his 

 earnestness as a teacher, and the enthusiasm they imbibed from his 

 precepts and cherished by his example. Unostentatious in his search 

 after truth, he was neither so frequent or voluminous an avowed 

 contributor to the common stock, as many men of much inferior 

 talent ; but he was continually engaged in fostering the spirit and 

 directing the pursuits of others, of whom some have largely contri- 

 buted, in their riper years, to extend the boundaries of medical and 

 surgical knowledge. 



The biography of Dr. Cullen, whose character he held in high 

 veneration, occupied the years of his retirement. The vigour of his 

 faculties remained unimpaired to the last, and he contemplated with 

 calm serenity the approaching end of a life devoted to the cultiva- 

 tion and improvement of the profession he had chosen, and of which 

 he was a distinguished ornament. 



Astronomy has sustained a heavy loss, in the last year, by the 

 death of Bessel. Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel was born at 

 Minden, on ti)e 22nd of July 1784. His father held a civil office 

 under the Prussian government, with the title of Justizrath, but 

 his means were narrow and his family numerous ; and at the age 

 of fifteen the future astronomer began his career as an assistant 

 or ap|)rentice in a mercantile house in Bremen. Having acquired 

 a taste for Astronomy and Mathematics, ho assiduously devoted his 

 leisure time to the study of those sciences; and his progress was 

 such that he soon attracted the notice and obtained the friendship 

 of Dr. Olbers, then in the zenith of iiis fame. His first published 

 essay, which appeared in Zach's ' Monatliche Correspondenz' in 

 180l, was u reduction of the observations made by Harriot and 

 Tor])orley of the comet of 1607. In communicating this paper to 

 Zach, Olbers eulogised, in the warmest terms, the acquirements and 

 industry of his young frit^nd, and expressed his regret that so much 

 talent and zeal, and such powers of calculation, should not have 

 been acquired for the exclusive service of astronomy. An oppor- 

 tunity was soon found of making the desired accpiisition ; Bessel, 

 in I80(), becoming successor to Harding in the oftice of assistant 

 to Schroet<;r, in tiie Observatory of Lilienthal. In this congenial 

 Hituation he rapidly acquired for himself a great reputation ; and 



Phil. Map. S. 3. Vol. 30. No. 200. March 1 84.7. P 



