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TAYLOR, ALF11ED S WAYNE. 



VICO, FRANCIS DE. 



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more success ihaii bis elder brother, perhaps cm account of his not 

 being so good an artist. In early life he was attached to the study of 

 Entomology, and assisted his father in those departments of liis 

 labours where a knowledge of insects was required. On marrying 

 however he gave up his Entomology and commenced business as a 

 dealer in natural history objects, and visited the Continent of 

 Europe for the purpose of obtaining specimens. He bought the cele- 

 brated Tankerville collection of shells, for which he gave six thousand 

 pounds. He also bought several other large collections. His know- 

 ledge of the forms of shells was very extensive, and he projected 

 and published a great work entitled ' The Genera of recent and Fossil 

 Shells.' This was published from 1820 to 1824. His father and 

 brother executed the drawings and engravings, and ho drew up the 

 descriptions. His papers on various species of Mollusca are very 

 numerous, and were published in the ' Zoological Journal,' the ' Pro- 

 ceedings of the Zoological Society,' the ' Magazine of Natural History,' 

 and the 'Reports of the British Association.' A list of these papers, 

 upwards of forty in number, is given in Agassiz's and Strickland's 

 ' Bibliography of Zoology,' published by the Ray Society. Besides 

 these papers and the work on the genera of shells he published 

 several other independent works; amongst these should be men- 

 tioned the Catalogue of the collection of the late Earl of Tankerville, 

 ' Species Conchyliorum, or concise original Descriptions and Obser- 

 vations of all the Species of recent Shells with their Varieties,' London, 

 1830. ' Conchological Illustrations, or coloured figures of all the 

 hitherto uufigured recent Shells, with their varieties,' London, 1832- 

 45. ' Thesaurus Couchyliorum, or Figures and Descriptions of Shells,' 

 London, 1842. He was a Fellow of the Linnaean Society. 



SOWEUBT, CHARLES EDWARD, third son of James, was born on the 

 1st of February 1795, and died in June 1842. He assisted first his 

 father and afterwards his brother James de Carle in their natural 

 history publications till 1831, when the copyright of ' English Botany' 

 falling to his share, he commenced the publication of a second edition 

 on small paper, with large additions. This work is at present being 

 reprinted by his son, John Edward Sowerby. 



* SOWERBS-, GEORGE BRETTIMGHAH, son of the above George Bretting- 

 hain Sowerby, was born March 25, 1812, and is now well known as a 

 naturalist and natural history engraver. He has continued the ' The- 

 saurus Conchyliorum ' of his father, and has also contributed largely 

 to the natural history literature of the day. His descriptions of new 

 shells in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society are very numerous. 

 He has also published several independent works: 1. 'A Concholo- 

 gical Manual,' in 1839, of which a fourth edition appeared in 1852. 

 2. ' Conchological Illustrations,' a continuation of his father's work 

 from 1830 to 1842. 3. 'Popular British Conchology,' London, 1854. 

 4. ' A popular Guide to the Aquarium,' London, 1857. He ia a 

 Fellow of the Linnsean Society. 



* SOWERBT, HENRY, a younger son of George Brettingham Sowerby, 

 who is now in Australia, commenced his career as a natural history 

 artist and mineralogist. He wrote ' Popular Mineralogy ' in Reeves' 

 series of ' Popular Natural History Manuals.' 



Other members of this family have also cultivated the same tastes 

 and are known as artists and naturalists. 



* TAYLOR, ALFRED SWAINE, a distinguished chemist and 

 medical jurist. He was educated for the medical profession at Guy's 

 Hospital in London, and became a Licentiate of the Apothecaries' 

 Society in 1828, and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 

 1830. He was subsequently appointed lecturer on chemistry to the 

 Guy's Hospital Medical School, and also lecturer on forensic medicine 

 or medical jurisprudence. He has written two works in connection 

 with forensic medicine, which are the principal text-books in our 

 medical schools, and have given to Dr. Taylor a deservedly high 

 position as a chemist and medical jurist. The first of these was 

 entitled ' A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence,' and embraced all those 

 subjects of inquiry which are brought before the medical man in 

 cases of criminal inquiry. The importance of the subject of poisoning 

 and the rapid advances of chemical knowledge in relation to poisons, 

 induced Dr. Taylor to extend this part of his work, and to publish a 

 volume devoted entirely to the subject of poisons. In 1848 he pub- 

 lished his second volume, ' On Poisons in relation to Medical Juris- 

 prudence and Medicine.' These works have brought Dr. Taylor into 

 great repute in the investigation of cases of suspected criminal poison- 

 ing. Recently he has been employed by the crown in cases de- 

 manding chemical research. He was thus employed on the trial of 

 William Palmer for the murder of John Parsons Cook, and although 

 unable to detect strychnia in the contents of the murdered man's 

 body, Dr. Taylor gave his evidence against Palmer on the ground that 

 the symptoms exhibited by Cook could be produced by no other 

 means than strychnia, and that this agent might destroy life without 

 being in sufficient quantity in the body after death to yield proofs of 

 its presence to chemical re-agents. It is well known that a large 

 amount of chemical evidence was brought to combat the latter part 

 of Dr. Taylor's evidence, and subsequent to the trial be published a 

 work 'On poisoning by Strychnia, with comments on the Medical 

 Evidence given at the trial of William Palmer for tho murder of 

 John Parsons Cook,' London, 1856. In this work he defends himself 



from tho charges brought against him cither directly or indirectly 

 by the evidence got up by the unhappy prisoner. Dr. Taylor edited 

 for some years tho 'Medical Gazette,' and has been a frequent con- 

 tributor to the weekly medical periodical literature. 



In 1852 the honorary degree of doctor of medicine was conferred 

 on him by the University of St. Andrews- In 1848 he became a 

 Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, London, and in 1853 

 a Fellow of the same body. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society in 1845. 



TSCHUDI, JOHANN JAKOB VON, an eminent naturalist and 

 ethnologist, was born at Glarus, of a knightly family in Switzerland, 

 on the 25th of July 1818. He was educated first at the Gymnasium 

 and then at tho University of Zurich, where he devoted much of his 

 attention to natural history and medical science, and displayed a 

 marked interest in scientific travels. In order to extend his studies in 

 the natural-history sciences he proceeded from Zurich to Neufch&tel, 

 and afterwards to Leyden, where he prepared his ' System der Batra- 

 cbier,' Leyden, 1838. Subsequently he went to Paris, where an oppor- 

 tunity seemed to present itself of carrying out his strong desire of 

 making a voyage round the world, and he accordingly embarked on 

 board a French ship. On reaching Peru however the vessel was sold 

 to the Peruvian government, and Von Tschudi was constrained to 

 limit hia labours to an investigation of the natural history aud ethno- 

 logy of Peru. The limitation of his field of inquiry had however the 

 advantage of enabliug him to survey it more thoroughly. He spent 

 five years in the investigation, returning to Europe in 1843 ; and 

 obstacles having intervened which prevented him from carrying out 

 his wish to accompany Franklin in his Arctic expedition, he deter- 

 mined to devote himself to the arrangement, for the purpose of publi- 

 cation, of the rich mass of materials he had collected in Peru. For 

 this purpose he retired to his estate of Jakobshof, near Weiner Neu- 

 stadt, in Lower Austria, from whence he has since given to the world 

 a general account of his travels, under the title of ' Peru Reiseerin- 

 nerungen aus den Jahrem 1838-42,' 2 vols., St. Gall, 1846, which has 

 been translated into English, in 1847, by T.Ross; and the more 

 special works ' Untersuchungen liber die Fauna Peruana ' (Investi- 

 gations of the Fauna of Peru), St. Gall, 1844-47, with 72 plates, a 

 work of great value ; the splendid ' Antiguedades Peruanas,' Vienna, 

 1851, with atlas, published in conjunction with Don Mariano Eduardo 

 de Rivera; and his elaborate work 'Die Kechua sprache,' 2 vols., 

 Vienna, 1853, containing a grammar, dictionary, and vocabulary of the 

 language of the natives of Peru. These works display a clear con- 

 ception of the true purpose of such an investigation, and have placed 

 their author among the most eminent of those laborious and learned 

 men who have devoted themselves to that particular department of 

 scientific inquiry. 



VICO, FRANCIS DE, one of the most distinguished astronomers of 

 modern Italy, the son of Count Ascanio de Vico-Ubaldini and the 

 Countess Amalia Archinto, was born at Macerata on the 19th of May 

 1805. He was educated partly at the Collegio dei Nobili in Urbino, 

 partly in the school of the well-known congregation of the Scolopi at 

 Siena, and entered the Jesuit Society as a novice in 1823. After 

 passing with much distinction through the usual stages, both as a 

 scholar and as a master, in the Roman College of that Society, he was 

 appointed (in 1835) assistant of Father Stephen Dumouchel, who was 

 at that time in charge of the observatory ; and it was a sort of pre- 

 sage of the history of his after career, that one of the first duties 

 assigned to him was to calculate the time of the appearance of the 

 then expected Halley's comet, both according to the elements of 

 Damoiseau and to those of Pontecoulant. The young astronomer had 

 the satisfaction of being the first to observe the comet, on the 5th of 

 August 1835. Soon afterwards, de Vico, in consequence of the great 

 age of F. Dumouchel, becoming the principal astronomer of the Roman 

 Observatory, undertook a long series of observations for the purpose 

 of ascertaining the suspected error in the latitude of Rome, as deter- 

 mined by his illustrious predecessors, Boscovich, Calandrelli, Conti, 

 and Reich enbach. These observations, which amounted to nearly 

 8000 in number, were eminently successful, and the result was a 

 correction of an error of two seconds in the received latitude. He 

 engaged at the same time on a similar series of observations for the 

 longitude, in concert with the astronomers of Paris and Naples. Soon 

 afterwards, Father de Vico, at the instance of Schumacher of Altona, 

 undertook a course of observations of the planet Venus, for which the 

 clearness of the Roman atmosphere was peculiarly adapted, with a 

 view to the determination of the time of its rotation upon its own 

 axis. The success of this undertaking contributed more than all his 

 previous labours to establish his reputation among the astronomers 

 of Europe ; and his subsequent observations of the satellites of Saturn, 

 and of the inner ring of that planet, as well as his detailed reports on 

 the nebulae, which about that time had become a prominent subject of 

 interest, fully sustained that reputation. 



Father de Vico however is most popularly known as an observer by 

 his numerous and successful discoveries in the cometary system, which 

 he was one of the earliest in more recent times to take up as a sys- 

 tematic study. During the yeara 1845, 1846, and 1847 he discovered 

 no less than eight of these mysterious bodies, in seven of which his 



