iv " BUNSENIANA " 



79 



time some startling examples, and these I would tell 

 him in great detail. The interest which he took in 

 these cases was in no degree due to a morbid seeking 

 after horrors, but entirely to scientific appreciation of 

 the value and trend of evidence. It was in reading 

 trials such as that of Palmer, where conviction was 

 obtained in spite of the fact that no poison was found 

 on the body, or that of Madeleine Smith, where the 

 verdict was given of non-proven although death from 

 antimonial poisoning was ascertained, that Bunsen 

 found relaxation. He was also an omnivorous reader 

 of light literature ; his table was loaded with books 

 sent in on approbation from the " Museum " Library, 

 and he easily judged of their contents without cutting 

 them open. 



Although he was, in his latter years, unable to walk 

 far, as had been his habit formerly, he enjoyed the 

 beauties of mountain and forest as keenly as ever, 

 driving through the chestnut woods which extend to 

 the Konigsstuhl. 



Gradually failing in strength and health, but always, 

 as he once wrote to me, " able to enjoy the humour of 

 life," he peacefully breathed his last on August i6th, 

 1899. A singularly touching portrait of Bunsen in his 

 later life faces this page. 



The obituary notices which appeared in the Press 

 did him, I think, justice both as an investigator 

 and as a true and noble-hearted man. It naturally 

 fell to my lot to write some of them ; and in the 

 Times on the morning following his death, and in 

 Nature of August 3ist, 1899, I was able to give 

 sketches of the man and his work. I wrote similar 

 notices for the Royal Society ; and, lastly, I gave a 

 more complete account of him in a Memorial Lecture 

 read before the Chemical Society, of which he had 



