86 SIR WILLIAM EAMSAY 



staff. Through the members of the College Council also 

 the advantage of intercourse with some of the leading 

 men of business in Bristol was secured to the professorial 

 staff. The great majority of the leading citizens had 

 their residences on the high ground of Clifton and the 

 neighbourhood of the Downs, and thus the best elements 

 in the society of the place were brought by the physical 

 circumstances of the locality near together. The social 

 charm of Kamsay and his wife helped not a little to 

 increase the friendliness pervading the place. A little 

 Browning Society, which had been started by some of 

 the masters at Clifton, afforded opportunities for meeting 

 them and joining them in grappling with the obscurities 

 of Paracelsus and Sordello. Longer lived and possessed 

 of greater vitality was the Scientific Club, which arose 

 out of a previously existing Society meeting at the 

 Museum. Kamsay and Shenstone were the chief pro- 

 moters of the Club, which met four or five times in 

 the session, and after an informal dinner some member 

 would speak rather than read a paper on any subject 

 which he had made his own. One of these communica- 

 tions from Ramsay was probably the paper " On Smell " 

 printed in Nature for 1882. The Bristol Society of 

 Naturalists, of which Ramsay was at one time President, 



book on the subject. He is one of my chums here, and I shall be very 

 sorry if he goes. He is at present at Clifton College." 



This appears to refer to the Professorship of Physics at Bangor University 

 College, for which, however, Worthington was not chosen. In 1887 he was 

 appointed Professor in the Dockyard School, Portsmouth, and afterwards 

 transferred to the Royal Naval Engineering College, Devonport and 

 Greenwich. He died at the end of 1916. 



