144 WOLLASTON. 



having observed, loud enough for him to hear, that he was uncon- 

 scious of what was passing around him, Wollaston made a sign for 

 pencil and paper, and then wrote down some figures, and after 

 casting up the sum, returned the paper : the amount was found to 

 be correct. 



Dr. Wollaston died on the 22nd of December, 1828, at the age of 

 sixty-two only a few months before his great scientific contem- 

 poraries, Sir Humphry Davy and Dr. Thomas Young. He was buried 

 in Chiselhurst churchyard, Kent. Dr. William Henry* gives the 

 following summary of his character : 



" Dr. Wollaston was endowed with bodily senses of extraordinary 

 acuteness and accuracy, and with great general vigour of under- 

 standing. Trained in the discipline of the exact sciences, he had 

 acquired a powerful command over his attention, and had habitu- 

 ated himself to the most rigid correctness both of thought and 

 language. He was sufficiently provided with the resources of the 

 mathematics, to be enabled to pursue with success profound en- 

 quiries in mechanical and optical philosophy, the results of which 

 enabled him to unfold the causes of phenomena not before under- 

 stood, and to enrich the arts connected with those sciences by the 

 invention of ingenious and valuable instruments. In chemistry 

 he was distinguished by the extreme nicety and delicacy of his 

 observations, by the quickness and precision with which he marked 

 resemblances and discriminated differences, the sagacity with which 

 he devised experiments and anticipated their results, and the skill 

 with which he executed the analysis of fragments of new substances, 

 often so minute as to be scarcely perceptible by ordinary eyes. 

 He was remarkable, too, for the caution with which he advanced 

 from facts to general conclusions ; a caution which, if it sometimes 

 prevented him from reaching at once the most sublime truths, yet 

 rendered every step of his ascent a secure station, from which it 

 was easy to rise to higher and more enlarged inductions." Weld's 

 History of the Royal Society, with Memoirs of the Presidents. London, 

 1848. Sketches of the Royal Society, &c., by Sir John Barrow, Bart., 

 F.R.S. London, 1849. * 



* Preface to Elements of Experimental Chemistry, Eleventh Edition. 



