05 



WOOLHOUSE, JOHN THOMAS. 



WOOLSTON, THOMAS. 



806 



&c. ; " for the purpose of getting as complete and satisfactory informa- 

 tion of the whole mineral kingdom as he could possibly obtain." In 

 all natural and artificial exposures of the rocks he noted in a journal 

 everything memorable in each pit, quarry, or mine. Unable to travel 

 in Europe arnklab the commotions then prevalent, he drew up a series 

 of queries, and transmitted them to intelligent foreigners, who might 

 givo him some insight into the structure of the earth as it appeared in 

 foreign regions. The result of all these inquiries was, that " the cir- 

 cumstances of these things were much the same in remoter countries 

 as in England ; " and Woodward proceeded to combine his observa- 

 tions into ' A Natural History of the Earth.' This work, which ap- 

 peared in 1695 (dedicated to Sir Robert Southwell, president of the 

 Royal Society), has had a remarkable and permanent influence on the 

 progress of English geology. It establishes great truths, linked with 

 great errors. It refutes the notion of .the earlier writers, such as Plot, 

 who believed that the fishes, shells, and corals found in the rocks were 

 " mere mineral substances," never connected with or dependent on 

 the functions of life, but formed, like " selenites, marcasites, and flints," 

 by a plastic force in the earth ; proves them to be the exuviae of ani- 

 mals ; and appeals to them as ancient inhabitants of the eea, yielding 

 evidence of great revolutions in the condition of the globe. 



Woodward's conception of these great truths is clear. His inferences 

 concerning the nature and proximate causes of the phenomena which 

 .he had examined are clouded by fundamental errors ; for instead of 

 the philosophical opinion of antiquity revived by Steno, that the dry 

 land in which the marine exuviae were found had formerly been the 

 bed of the sea, and had been raised out of it by convulsions, or left by 

 retirement of the waters, Woodward maintained that these marine 

 bodies "were borne forth of the sea by the universal deluge; that 

 during the time of the deluge all the stone and marble of the antedilu- 

 vian earth, all the metals of it, all mineral concretions, and, in a word, 

 all fossils whatever that had any solidity, were totally dissolved into 

 one confused mass : the parts of this mass subsided according to the 

 laws of gravity, the heaviest descending first, and inclosing the heavier 

 sorts of shells (as cockles, &c.) : the lighter (as chalk) fulling after- 

 wards, and inclosing lighter shells (as echini) ; while human bodies, 

 bodies of quadrupeds, birds, &c., teeth and horns, &c., shells of land- 

 snails, &c., being, bulk for bulk, lighter than sand, marl, chalk, &c., 

 were not precipitated till the last, and so lay above all the former, 

 constituting the supreme or outmost stratum of the globe." Wood- 

 ward further maintained that the strata were originally horizontal, 

 and that the actual irregularities of their position were due to convul- 

 sions whose caitse was seated in the earth ; and in his pages appear 

 many other curious glimpses of important truths, obscured by the 

 general fault of his system, the reference of all the phenomena which 

 he observed to one universal deluge. 



The work received and deserved applause, but met with immediate 

 opposition on good philosophical principles by J. A., M.D. (Dr. Arbuth- 

 not), 1697. The author however remained unconvinced, and published 

 in 1724 a defence of his system against the objections of Camerarius 

 of Tubingen (' Naturalis Historia Telluris illustrata et aucta'). To 

 this work Woodward appended a Classification of Earths, Stones, Salts, 

 Bitumens, Minerals, aud Metals (' Mcthodica Fossilium in Classes Dis- 

 tributio,' dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton, Pres. R.S.). In 1728, after 

 his death, appeared an enlargement of this method, accompanied by 

 interesting letters to Newton, Hoskyns, &c., and directions for observ- 

 ers and collectors. A greater and more valuable work, in two volumes, 

 published from Woodward's manuscript in 1728 and 1729 ('Attempt 

 towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England '), closes the list 

 of the geological publications of Woodward. The first volume of this 

 catalogue contains notices of above " fifteen hundred bodyes" in the 

 first part, and a catalogue of " English extraneous fossils" in the second 

 part. These specimens were bequeathed to the University of Cam- 

 bridge, and are still preserved therein, according to the directions of 

 the will, by the professors on Woodward's foundation. In the second 

 volume are described additional English and some foreign specimens, 

 which were ordered to be sold. 



Dr. Woodward appears to have been diligent and accurate in gather- 

 ing information, and tolerably versed in the philosophy and science of 

 his day, but his hypotheses are little in harmony with chemistry or 

 mechanics, and sometimes opposed to the most obvious and ordinary 

 facts. The sincerity and zeal with which he prosecuted geology are 

 evinced by the noble bequest of his collections, and a fund for endow- 

 ing a professorship, to the University of Cambridge ; a bequest which 

 has given the opportunity for Mitchell and Sedgwick to add to the 

 renown of the University, and to link the name of Woodward with 

 some of the highest and surest generalisations in geological science. 



In 1707 he published 'An Account of Roman Urns and other 

 Antiquities lately dug up near Bishopsgate,' addressed to Sir Christo- 

 pher Wren, and in other respects he distinguished himself as a collector 

 of antiquities. His professional career appears to have been prosperous. 

 He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society and of the College of 

 Physicians, and was appointed professor of physic in Gresham College. 

 He engaged in controversy with Mead and Friend on the subject of 

 small-pox. His death happened in 1728. 



WOOLHOUSE, JOHN THOMAS, an English surgeon who devoted 

 himself principally to the treatment of diseases of the eye. For this 

 purpose he travelled throughout Europe, and became known to the 



principal men of science of hia day. He wrote many works on the 

 eye and its diseases. They are all written in French, and were pub- 

 lished in Paris, although he does not appear to have resided in France. 

 His best works are his ' Catalogue d'lnstrurnena pour les Operations 

 des Yeux,' published in 8vo at Paris in 1696, and his ' Experiences 

 des differentes Operations manuelles et des Guerisons spdcifiques qu'il 

 a practiquees aux Yeux.' This last book, which contains a good 

 account of the various operations performed at the time it was 

 written, was published at Paris, in 1711. His books are written in 

 an inflated style, and were evidently intended to advance his views 

 in the practice of his art. He wrote against Heister on the Beat of 

 cataract, in which he contended that it was not in the crystalline 

 lens. There is at present in the library of the College of Surgeons, 

 London, a manuscript work by Woolhouse, entitled ' Traite" des Mala- 

 dies de I'GZil,' in two volumes quarto. This work is more complete 

 than his other works, but was never published. 



(Biog. Med. ; Woolhouse, Works, at College of Surgeons.) 

 WOOLLETT, WILLIAM. This excellent engraver was born at 

 Maidstone in Kent, in 1735. He learned bis art of John Tinney, an 

 obscure engraver in London, but he soon adopted a style of his own, 

 acquired early a great reputation as a landscape engraver, and was 

 appointed engraver to George III. No artist ever used together more 

 effectively the etching needle and the graver : in foliage, water, and in 

 rocks, Woollett was particularly successful, and is still unrivalled; 

 but in figures, and especially in flesh, he was less so. In the latter 

 part of his life Woollett took to historical engraving ; and also in this 

 department he has produced some of the finest plates of which the 

 English school of engraving can boast : the ' Death of General Wolfe,' 

 and the ' Battle of the Hogue,' both after West, are considered his 

 best historical pieces, and they are certainly plates of remarkable 

 merit. Of his landscapes his masterpieces are those which he en- 

 graved after Wilson : they are nine in number, namely, ' Phaeton,' 

 'Niobe,' ' Celadon and Amelia,' ' Ceyx and Alcyone,' 'Snowdon,' 'Cicero 

 at his Villa,' 'Meleager and Atalanta,' 'Apollo and the Seasons,' and 

 ' Solitude,' a companion-piece to ' Cicero at his Villa.' In the last 

 plate he was assisted by Ellis, and in the Meleager and in the Apollo 

 by Pouncey. He engraved also after Claude, Zuccarelli, the Smiths 

 of Chichester, Stubbs, and others ; and he executed some plates after 

 views drawn from nature by himself. Woollett died in London in 

 1785, aged fifty, and was buried in old St. Pancras churchyard : there 

 is a monument to him in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. He 

 is spoken of as a man of admirable character, a very amiable dispo- 

 sition, and as being utterly regardless of labour when he thought that 

 he could by any additional amount of work improve a plate. 



WOOLSTON, THOMAS, was born in 1669, at Northampton, and 

 was the son of a respectable tradesman of that city. He went from 

 a grammar-school to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where, after 

 taking the degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts, he was 

 elected a fellow of his college, and continued to reside as such. Ho 

 entered into holy orders, and in due time took the degree of Bachelor 

 of Divinity. In 1705 he published his first work, entitled 'The Old 

 Apology of the Truth for the Christian Religion against the Jews and 

 Gentiles revived.' No publication again proceeded from him till after 

 an interval of fifteen years spent in laborious study of the works of 

 the fathers within the walls of his college; and in 1720 he published 

 three Latin tracts, one of which, entitled ' De Pontii Pilati ad Tibe- 

 rium Epistola circa Res Jesu Christi gestap, per Mystagogum,' was an 

 endeavour to prove that the letter of Pontius Pilate which had been 

 transmitted by the fathers was a forgery, without denying that a 

 letter had been written to Tiberius; and the two others were 

 letters written, under the title of ' Origen Adamantius Renatus,' 

 to Doctors Whitby, Waterland, and Winston, on the interpretation of 

 the Scripture?. About the same time he published two tracts, in the 

 form of letters to Dr. Bennet, and under the name of Aristobulus, one 

 on the question 'Whether the Quakers do not the nearest of any 

 other sect of religion resemble the Primitive Christians in principles 

 and practice \ ' and the other being ' A Defence of the Apostles and 

 Primitive Fathers of the Church in their Allegorical Interpretation of 

 the Law of Moses, against the Ministers of the Letter and Literal 

 Commentators of this age ; ' and he immediately followed up these 

 publications by writing an answer to them. The letters to Dr. 

 Bennet, and the answer to the letters, abounded in attacks upon the 

 clergy, which, together with the spirit of allegorical interpretation of 

 the Scriptures pervading as well the latter of the two letters, as his 

 previous letters to Doctors Whitby, Waterland, and Whiston, exposed 

 Woolston to much suspicion and attack from the clergy. His next 

 publication, in 1722, was one not calculated to feive offence, being a 

 tract entitled ' The exact Fitness of the Time in which Christ was 

 manifested in the Flesh, demonstrated by Reason, against the Objec- 

 tions of the Old Gentiles and of Modern Unbelievers,' which had been 

 written twenty years before, and read in Sidney Sussex College chapel. 

 In 1723 and 1724 he published four pamphlets, under the title of 

 ' Free Gifts to the Clergy,' and then an answer to them, all directed 

 against the clergy. In 1726 he entered into the controversy raised 

 by Anthony Collins's ' Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion,' 

 by the publication of a work to which he gave the name of ' Moderator 

 between an Infidel and Apostate,' and two 'Supplements to Mode- 

 ' rator.' The lengths to which he carried his allegorical interpretation 



