CHAPTER XIV. 1 



FORBES' SCIENTIFIC WORK. 



IT is not easy, in a chapter necessarily short, and as little 

 technical as possible (because this work is throughout 

 intended for the general reader), to notice, with sufficient 

 exposition of their object and of the advances made in 

 them, even the more valuable of Forbes' scientific 

 researches. The titles of all his published papers will be 

 found in an Appendix to this volume, and we must refer 

 to the preceding chapters for some general account of 

 them, especially the earlier, and those which treat of 

 questions connected with geology, mineralogy, and 

 meteorology, with which we cannot attempt to deal. 



In addition to his M.SS. Lectures, in which the whole 

 range of Natural Philosophy was gone over lectures 

 fully written out, and scrupulously kept up to each 

 advance in science, but which he unfortunately ordered 

 his executors to destroy Forbes distinguished himself 

 as regards the general subject by writing a very remaik- 

 allr Dissertation on the Progress of Mathematical and 

 riitjsical Science, }nnn .j,, ill ij from 1775 to 1850. This 

 was published in the last edition of the Encyclopaedia 

 ''nitica. Such an article is necessarily of a his- 

 al i -haracter, and could be attempted only by a man 

 of v r adinu, as \\cll as of great knovvlcd^v 



of the subject. But it also n <juircs for its successful 



1 In part rcjirintod from the Scotsman, January r.tli. ls09. The 

 rcmainl hole of the following, chapter, were 



written in January 1872. P. G. T. 



