November 25, 1915] 



NATURE 



345 



of his mental development, have greatly tended 

 to form and streng^then his intellectual character, 

 rhe fact is, Dalton was a born teacher, and, 

 luckily for the world, he realised his true voca- 

 tion. He then joined his elder brother Jonathan 

 in carrying- on Mr. Bewley's school at Kendal, 

 xmd for twelve years he instructed the youth of 

 l)oth sexes in English, Latin, Greek, and French ; 

 writing, arithmetic, merchants' accounts, and the 

 mathematics. It is interesting to trace, from the 

 school syllabus issued by the brothers, how John 

 was gradually drawn to the study of science, first 

 to the oldest of all the sciences, astronomy, and 

 then to the various branches of physics, or natural 

 philosophy, as it was then termed. The late 

 Prof. Huxley used to say to his colleagues, " If 

 you want to get up a subject, offer to Ifecture 

 upon it," and Dalton would seem, in practice, to 

 have acted upon this principle. The school sylla- 

 Inis was gradually enlarged until, as Sir Henry 

 Roscoe says, it "forcibly reminds us of that of a 

 technical school of the present day." 



When twenty-seven years of age, John Dalton 

 accepted the position of tutor in mathematics and 

 natural philosophy at the Manchester Academy, 

 and for upwards of fifty years Manchester con- 

 tinued to be his home until his death at the age 

 of seventy-eight. 



For some years prior to his removal to Man- 

 chester Dalton had offered to give public lectures, 

 md the Manchester Literary and Philosophical 

 Society possesses copies of the prospectus he 

 issued for courses on natural philosophy to be held 

 at Kendal — "Admittance 6J. each lecture, or 55, 

 the whole." After his removal to Manchester he 

 again arranged for a course at Kendal " as far as 

 the apparatus there would admit " — " about six 

 lectures on chemisti'y and six on the other 

 branches would be my plan." Tickets for the 

 course to admit a gentleman and lady, or two 

 ladies, \os. 6d. ; single lectures, is. 6d. 



Dalton was now fully embarked on the career 

 of a public lecturer on science, and until he was 

 close upon seventy years of age there were few- 

 years in which he was not called upon to give 

 courses. At the instigation of Davy he was early 

 invited to London — Albemarle Street sharing with 

 Athens a passion for the newest thing — to receive 

 from the youthful protcf^e of Rumford, himself 

 some twelve years Dalton 's junior, instruction in 

 declamation, and in the art and mystery of holding 

 the attention of a Royal Institution audience. 



In the publication before us Dalton's later career 



as a science lecturer is succinctly set forth. He 



repeated his London lectures in Manchester. " In 



a populous town like this, where the arts and 



manufactures are so intimately connected with 



arious branches of science, it may be presumed 



hat public encouragement will not be wanting to 



a person qualified to exhibit and illustrate the 



truths of experimental philosophy upon a liberal 



and extensive scale." Nor was it. John wrote to 



Jonathan that "a more respectable audience has 



seldom been had on a similar occasion." In 1807 



he was invited to Edinburgh, and subsequently to 



Glasgow, where, as he savs, "he was honoured 



NO. 2404, VOL. 96I 



with the attention of gentlemen, universally ac- 

 knowledged to be of the first respectability for 

 their scientific attainments, most of whom were 

 pleased to express their desire to see the publica- 

 tion of the doctrine." The "doctrine" thus indi- 

 cated took the shape of that epoch-makings work, 

 "A New System of Chemical Philosophy," part i. 

 of which appeared in the following year. 



Although the greater number of Dalton's public 

 lectures were given in Manchester, at the rooms 

 of the Literary and Philosophical Society, of 

 which he became the honoured president, or at 

 Thomas Turner's Medical School in Pine Street, 

 or at the Royal Manchester Institution, or at the 

 Mechanics' Institution, where he gave his last 

 lecture, in 1835, on the Atomic Theory, he was 

 readily induced, until age and physical infirmity 

 began to tell upon him, to visit the neighbouring 

 towns, and Leeds and Birmingham were in turn 

 favoured with his presence. All that can be 

 ascertained respecting these various courses, and 

 especially of the diagrams and illustrations used 

 by Dalton in connection with them, most of which 

 seem to have been prepared by himself, is set 

 forth in the interesting account before us. The 

 diagrams, 150 in number, are the property of the 

 Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 

 and Prof. Haldane Gee, and Drs. Coward and 

 Harden have done a signal service to the history 

 of one of the most remarkable epochs in science 

 in giving a description of the more important of 

 them, and of the circumstances under which they 

 were first employed by their illustrious author. 



T. E. Thorpe. 



PROF. RAPHAEL MELDOLA, F.RS. 



SCIENCE and the world are alike the poorer by 

 the sudden death of Prof. Meldola on Tues- 

 day, November 16. Naturalist, chemist, physicist, 

 and man of affairs, it is no easy matter to esti- 

 mate, thus near to that sad event, the value of 

 his work and influence. But we may recall the 

 facts that at the time of his death he had been 

 for thirty years professor of chemistry at the 

 Technical College, Finsbury, a part of the City 

 and Guilds of London Institute, that he was also" 

 a vice-president of the Royal Society, a member 

 of the Advisory Council appointed by the Privy 

 Council to promote scientific research in relation 

 to trade and industry, and chairman of the 

 Advisory Council of the Board of British 

 Dyes (Ltd.), a commercial organisation fostered 

 by Government to assist in the manufacture of 

 dyestuffs in the United Kingdom. 



Raphael Meldola was the only son of the late 

 Samuel Meldola, and was born in Islington 

 July 19, 1849. They came of an ancient Sephardic 

 family, the Sephardis being Spanish and Portu- 

 guese Jews, the more aristocratic section of the 

 race. The genealogy of the Meldolas can be 

 traced through sixteen generations without a break, 

 back to Isaiah Meldola (b. 1282, d. 1340), of 

 Toledo. Under Spanish names the family flour- 

 ished long in Toledo, and produced many men of 



