Original Members 1 1 



was beginning to fail, and the end came on Nov. i8th, 1854. As 

 a teacher and writer (his memoirs were numerous), he was clear, 

 stimulative, and interesting ; he was an excellent draughtsman, had 

 an inexhaustible fund of humour, enlivening, as one result of this, 

 the British Association by founding the Red Lion Club, and yet 

 was a most industrious worker. The old, it was said, loved him 

 as a son, the younger as a brother. 



JOHN PETER GASSIOT, a liberal promoter of science and successful 

 pioneer in electricity, was born in London, April 2nd, 1797. After 

 some service as a midshipman, he entered the Spanish wine trade, 

 married early, and settled on Clapham Common. Becoming deeply 

 interested in electrical investigations, he acquired the best instru- 

 ments that could be made, and constructed batteries of exceptional 

 power, which he often placed at the service of his less wealthy 

 acquaintances. His writings chiefly deal with electricity, and 

 prove among other things that the static effect of a battery increases 

 with its chemical action, that an electric spark meets with no extra 

 resistance from water under a pressure of 447 atmospheres, but 

 cannot pass through an exhausted vacuum tube, and they record 

 some important investigations of the dark bands in electric dis- 

 charges. He was one of the founders of the Chemical Society, 

 initiated the Scientific Relief Fund of the Royal Society, and was 

 Chairman of the Kew Observatory Committee till his death in 1877. 



PROFESSOR JOHN GOODSIR, a slightly eccentric but able Professor 

 of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh, was a doctor's son, 

 born at Anstruther, Fife, in 1814, who began, when only twelve 

 years old, to study at St. Andrews. There he was attracted to 

 metaphysics and became a follower of Coleridge. In Nov. 1830 

 he was apprenticed to a surgeon-dentist in Edinburgh, and there 

 showed great skill in dissecting, but after passing the Scotch College 

 of Surgeons, in 1835, he spent the next five years in practising 

 with his father at Anstruther, while he made and published scientific 

 investigations. Returning to Edinburgh in 1850, he shared lodgings 

 with Edward Forbes (page 10), taking pupils in Anatomy till he 

 was appointed Professor of that subject in 1846. He was an 

 enthusiastic and suggestive teacher, indefatigable in dissecting 

 and in enriching his museum. In later years he suffered from an 

 affection of the spinal cord, and lived a recluse life, without even 

 one servant, till his sister joined him in housekeeping. He died 

 March 6th, 1867, having written about thirty papers, in some of 

 which he sought to prove that a triangle was the ground plan of all 

 organic forms, and to unite crystals with living organisms. 



PROFESSOR THOMAS GRAHAM, a chemist of note, ultimately 

 Master of the Mint, was a merchant-manufacturer's son, born at 

 Glasgow, Dec. 2oth, 1805, and educated at its University till in 



