124 THOMSON. 



the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway. He was a great friend of 

 George Stephenson's, and was present with him at the opening of 

 the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad when the unfortunate 

 accident occurred which resulted in the melancholy death of Mr. 

 Huskisson. 



Mr. Tennant died rather suddenly, in his seventy-first year, at his 

 house in Abercrombie Place, Glasgow. He was possessed of a con- 

 stitutional nervousness, rather remarkable in one of a large and 

 healthy frame, allied to a peculiar sensitiveness to the beautiful. 

 In after life he would often talk with pleasure of his youthful 

 reminiscences of the poet Burns, who was at that time on terms of 

 considerable intimacy with his family. Mr. Tennant was an earnest 

 and indefatigable promoter of economical and educational improve- 

 ment ; an uncompromising friend of civil and religious liberty ; 

 while his own inborn energy of character and clear intellect placed 

 him among the foremost of those men who, by uniting science to 

 manufactures, have at once extended their fields of action, and 

 entitled their occupations to be classed among the ranks of the 

 liberal professions. The Progress of Science and Art as developed in 

 the Bleaching of Cotton, by Henry Ashworth, Paper read before the 

 British Association at Manchester, September 5, 1861 ; and, Parti- 

 culars communicated by the Family. 



THOMAS THOMSON, M.D., F.R.S. 



Born April 12, 1773. Died July 2, 1852. 



Dr. Thomas Thomson, Regius Professor of Chemistry in the 

 University of Glasgow, who exercised a remarkable influence in the 

 development and extension of the science of chemistry during the 

 present age, was born at Crieff, in Perthshire. He received his early 

 education at the parish school of that place, and after remaining for 

 a time under the care of Dr. Doig, of Stirling, went to the Univer- 

 sity of St. Andrews, where he remained for a period of three years. 



Thomson entered upon his medical studies at the University of 

 Edinburgh, and during the session of 1795-96 attended the lectures 

 of the celebrated Dr. Black, who first awoke in him the latent taste 

 for that science of which he was destined to become so bright an 

 ornament. In 1796 he became connected with the Encyclopaedia, 

 Britannica, for an early edition of which he wrote the articles 

 Chemistry, Mineralogy, Vegetable Substances, Animal Substances, 

 and Dyeing Substances, &c. These articles formed the basis of his 



