815 



WORKING, ANDREW. 



WORSAAE, JENS JACOB. 



BJ6 



England, and the country of his education certainly had no cause to 

 blush for its pupil. At the age of nineteen he entered the Russian 

 army, in which he fought under Kutuzov against the Turks, and 

 took a distinguished part in the great campaigns against Napoleon I. 

 Ho commanded a division at the battle of Borodino, where he 

 was eeverely wounded, and he led the Russian cavalry at the battle 

 of Leipzig. It is said that on a subsequent occasion, in 1824, his 

 conduct in action elicited from Napoleon the exclamation, " That 

 is the stuff of which marshals are made." Several interesting notices 

 of his opinions and conversation at the time of the occupation of Paris 

 by the allies after Waterloo, are to be found in the diaries of his friend, 

 Sir John Malcolm, printed in the recent Life of Sir John, by Kaye. 

 He commanded the Russian contingent in France from 1815 to 18l8, 

 and is said to have paid an enormous sum from his private purse to 

 avoid the disgrace of leaving the debts of Russian officers unpaid when 

 they evacuated the country. In 1823, after his return to Russia, he 

 was appointed Governor of New Russia and Bessarabia, a post which 

 he held for many years, only quitting it for a short time in 1828, to 

 take the command of the Russian army after Meushikov had been 

 wounded at the siege of Varna. To this command was added in 1844, 

 that of the Caucasian Provinces, with an authority superior to that 

 of any preceding governor, Woronzow being made dependant on the 

 Czar alone. He adopted as far as possible a policy of conciliation 

 to the native tribes, while at the same time he pursued the war with 

 such vigour, as to capture in 1845 the stronghold of Shamyl, the town 

 of Dargo. The bravery and obstinacy of the mountaineers rendered 

 his military successes in Circassia of no permanent value, but he suc- 

 ceeded in introducing great improvements into the other countries 

 under his government, building towns, making roads, promoting the 

 cultivation of the vine, and setting in general an example of dis- 

 interestedness and high feeling. He always continued partial to the 

 land of his youth, he was fond of receiving Englishmen, and his 

 country-seat or palace at Alupka in the Crimea, the finest in the 

 country after the imperial residence of Orianda, was built from the 

 designs of an English architect, Mr. Papworth. He is understood to 

 have been averse to the Russian war with England and France on the 

 Turkish question, in which, by a somewhat singular combination of 

 circumstances, his nephew was the English secretary at war. During 

 the early progress of it he was kept by ill-health at Tiflis, and in 

 March 1854 he obtained a six months' leave of absence, which he 

 spent at Karlsbad and Schlangenbad, but with so little benefit, that in 

 October of the same year he solicited and obtained permission to 

 retire. He died on November 18th 1856 at Odessa, leaving behind 

 him a high reputation among both natives and foreigners for probity 

 and independence. 



* WORRING, ANDREW, manager of the Imperial Printing Office 

 at Vienna, and whose name is intimately associated with the new art 

 of Nature-Printing, was born at Vienna, about the year 1806. Having 

 entered the printing-office at an early age as a compositor-student, he 

 subsequently devoted his services to type-founding ; after having 

 acquired wh'ch, he paid great attention to the more important and 

 interesting branch of the business, also practised in that establishment, 

 the punch-cutting. He eventually succeeded Mr. Paul Pretsch in the 

 department of galvano-plastics. Here the practical genius of Mr. 

 Worring was called into operation in a new line by the idea of Pro- 

 fessor Haidinger in the year 1852, which however might have become 

 abortive, if it had not been for the skill and experience of Mr. 

 Worring, who made the experiments, and after the exercise of much 

 labour and display of intelligence conducted them to a successful 

 result. The first experiments were made in the simple transfer of 

 laces, patterns, &c. ; but they afterwards embraced leaves and flowers, 

 to the botanical illustration of which they were eminently applicable. 



Everything that emanates from the Vienna printing-office, being 

 a governmeut establishment, comes out under the auspices of the 

 director, and therefore the first specimens which appeared bore 

 the name of Auer. It was attempted to introduce these speci- 

 mens into England as a mercantile transaction ; but after a pro- 

 visional patent had been taken out, the scheme was abandoned. It 

 was again attempted to procure attention to them, by inserting them 

 as illustrations to a pamphlet, and for this purpose they were pre- 

 sented to some literary and scientific institutions. The pamphlet, as 

 a history of the new art, was comparatively of little worth. Its object 

 was to assert, with more violence than argument, that the secret of 

 the process had beeu surreptitiously obtained ; and amidst its asser- 

 tions were introduced personalities adverting to matters that had no 

 reference whatever to the case at issue. No serious reply was made 

 to these attacks. The interest of the subject of Nature-Printing, and 

 its successful introduction to this country, demand a few words of 

 explanation, which have been furnished to us. Mr. Henry Bradbury 

 was a student at the Imperial Printing OflBce of Vienna at the time of 

 the alleged discovery. Of course, the mysteries and manipulation of 

 its different departments were communicated to him in such capacity, 

 and he judged, as many of the greatest benefactors of industry have 

 thought before him, that he had every right to make use of his know- 

 ledge and skill for the benefit of his own country. No guarantee to 

 the contrary could be exacted, so none could be given. How far this 

 pamphlet, printed in four different languages, has effected its object 

 abroad, is shown by the gifts from crowned heads to the person assailed, 



for securing to England decidedly the finest specimen of the art. A 

 Lecture on Nature-Printing, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great 

 Britain in 1855, and published by Mr. Bradbury, plainly showed that 

 the so-called invention of Auer was not original, and therefore there 

 could have been no surreptitious adaptation of the process. 



Frankly admitting the beauty of the specimens from the Vienna 

 Imperial Printing Office, which had been forwarded to Denmark, Pro- 

 fessor Thiele of Copenhagen had at once thrown down the gage in 

 behalf of a Danish goldsmith, named Kyhl, as the inventor of the art. 

 Nor, indeed, is it at all unlikely that "Kyhl, in a practical point of 

 view, was the inventor. Although it must be admitted, that there 

 may be independent attempts at the perfecting of a common idea, 

 yet there always are under-currents of information, which lead to a 

 final result. This is more than hinted at by Professor Thiele, who 

 strongly alludes to the probability of Kyhl's process having become 

 divulged by his manuscripts. Even before the appearance of Councillor 

 Auer's so-called specimens (for it may be observed that subsequently 

 Councillor Auer withdrew his signature from the plates), a great many 

 gentlemen in England had been exercising their ingenuity in the 

 same channel, and had even assumed to be inventors, but the prac- 

 tical turn which they adopted, was rather to the ornamentation of 

 metals, than to the illustration of botanical works. In this consists 

 the great value of the practical skill of Mr. Worring : for the 

 specimens of his art show that it is admirably adapted to confer all 

 the advantages of an Herbarium, without any of its defects. The 

 works that have already been issued from the Vienna press, under the 

 auspices of Mr. Worring, are 'Specimen florae Cryptogauise vallis 

 Arpasch, carpatse Transilvani,' folio, with 7 plates, Vienna, 1853; 

 ' Physiotypia Plantarum Austriacarum der Naturselbstdruck in seiner 

 Anwendung auf die Gefasspflanzen des osterr. Kaiaerstaates,' 5 vols. 

 large fol., with 500 plates, and 1 vol. 4to, with 30 plates, Vienna, 

 1855; 'Die Algen der dalmatiuischen Kxiste mit Hinzuiiigurjg dor 

 von Kiitzung im adriatischen Meere uberhaupt aufgefuiidenen Arten,' 

 20 plates, Vienna, 1855. 



In this country the exemplification of Nature-Printing in its applica- 

 tion to the illustration of plants has been carried out on a magnificent 

 scale by Mr. Bradbury, in his ' Fern Flora of the United Kingdom,' 

 folio, with 51 plates, under the editorship of the celebrated botanist, 

 Dr. Lindley. While engaged in bringing out this work, he delivered 

 the lecture at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, already alluded 

 to, on ' Nature-Printing, its History and Objects." He entered very 

 fully into the former, and besides the crude endeavours of Kyhl, he 

 advanced another claimant for the honour of invention, if any, in the 

 person of Professor Kniphoff,* in 1761, whose specimens, amounting 

 to 1200, coloured, were of great beauty and perfection, so much as to 

 have excited the attention of Linnaeus. The question had then 

 become so public that it was successively taken up by the ' Quarterly 

 Review' and the 'Athenaeum.' Whatever may be the true history of 

 the discovery, which seems likely to remain a questio vexata, there 

 can be no doubt that for the succesful introduction of Nature-Printing, 

 as an adjunct to botany, we are indebted to Mr. Andrew Worring. 



(Die Entdeckung .des Naturselbstdruckes, &c., by Councillor Auer, 

 Vienna, 4to, 1854 ; Berlingske Titdende, No. 123, by Professor Thiele, 

 Copenhagen, 1853 ; Nature Printing, its History and Objects, by Henry 

 Bradbury, London, 4to; Quarterly Review, January 1857 ; Athenaum, 

 May 2, 1857; Literary Gazette, 1857.) 



* WORSAAE, JENS JACOB ASMUSSEN, a Danish antiquary, 

 well known in England, was born at Veile, ou the 14th of March 1821, 

 the son of a justitsraad, or legal functionary, whose birthplace was 

 Worsaac in Wendsyssel. In 1838, at the age of seventeen, he entered 

 the University of Copenhagen as a student, and in the same year he 

 was appointed one of the assistants in the Royal Museum of Northern, 

 Antiquities which had been called into existence by the zeal and 

 energy of C. J. Thomsen. At the university he was first a student of 

 theology and afterwards of law, but he was fortunately enabled from 

 his outset in life to devote himself to his favourite pursuit of anti- 

 quities. At the age of twenty-one he went on an antiquarian tour at 

 the public expense through parts of Sweden and Norway, and made 

 some researches which were afterwards embodied in one of his most 

 interesting publications, ' Runamo og Braavalle-slaget,' (Runamo and 

 the Battle of Bravalla), 4to, Copenhagen, 1844. The transaction to 

 which this pamphlet relates is one of the most curious, and at the 

 same time one of the most instructive, in the annals of autiquarianism. 

 Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish historian, writing in the 12th century, 

 and relating the exploits of a certain king, Harold Hildetaud, who was 

 killed at the battle of Bravalla, of which the date is so uucertaiu that 

 Olaus Wormius assigned it to the 3rd century after Christ, while 

 recent antiquaries place it in the 8th, records that the king caused 

 the exploits of his father to be inscribed on a portion of a rocky 

 path in Bleking, a district which now forms a province of Sweden, and 

 that King Waldemar the Great, in whose reigu Saxo Grammaticus 

 lived, feeling desirous to know the meaning of the inscription, had 

 sent some men to examine it, but they had been unable to make it out, 

 owing to the characters being partially filled up with ditt and injured 

 by the tramp of passengers. Olaus Wormius, the Danish antiquary 

 of the 17th century, rediscovered what he thought to be the inscription 



* ' Botanica in Original! sou Herbarium Vivum,' by D. J. H. Kniphoff. Halse, 

 Magd., 1761. 



