154 Mary Somerville. 



were very glad of the appointment, for at this time 

 we lost almost the whole of our fortune, through the 

 dishonesty of a person in whom we had the greatest 

 confidence. 



All the time we lived at Chelsea we had constant 

 intercourse with Lady Noel Byron and Ada, who 

 lived at Esher, and when I came abroad I kept up a 

 correspondence with both as long as they lived. Ada 

 was much attached to me, and often came to stay 

 with me. It was by my advice that she studied 

 mathematics. She always wrote to me for an ex- 

 planation when she met with any difficulty. Among 

 my papers I lately found many of her notes, asking 

 mathematical questions. Ada Byron married Lord 

 King, afterwards created Earl of Lovelace, a college 

 companion and friend of my son. 



Somerville had formed a friendship with Sir 

 Henry Bunbury when he had a command in Sicily, 

 and we went occasionally to visit him at Barton in 

 Suffolk. I liked Lady Bunbury very much ; she 

 was a niece of the celebrated Charles Fox, and had 

 a turn for natural history. I had made a collec- 

 tion of native shells at Burntisland, but I only 

 knew their vulgar names ; now I learnt their scien- 

 tific arrangement from Lady Bunbury. Her son, 

 Sir Charles Bunbury, is an authority for fossil 

 botany. The first Pinetum I ever saw was at Barton, 



