520 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. 



by a similar accumulation of miscellaneous lore, that different 

 species of gourds furnish the models for different utensils, 

 namely, the long- necked bottle with the egg-shaped body, the 

 constricted pilgrim's bottle, and the cupping-glass. 



AS A TEACHER AND EXPOUNDER. 



While many of Dr. Wilson's contemporaries could pursue a 

 train of research with greater ability, none perhaps could render 

 the new truth thus obtained so attractive by copious imagery 

 and varied illustration. The expansiveness of his style, which 

 led to his strictly scientific works being considered in some quar- 

 ters too diffuse, is a beauty in those where he appears as the 

 illustrator of our physical knowledge, for every figure tells, and 

 every fresh point of view has its own peculiar value. His popu- 

 larity as a lecturer, both with his students and with the public 

 at large, was very great. This arose partly from his thorough 

 knowledge of the subjects he handled, but more from the felicity 

 of his descriptions, the clearness of his explanations, and the 

 poetry and pathos which rendered the whole beautiful. His 

 little book on chemistry in ' Chambers's Educational Course/ 

 which is adapted for those who desire a knowledge of the fun- 

 damental principles and leading facts of the science, without 

 entering into any great detail, has already attained a sale of 

 upwards of twenty-four thousand, and that prose poem, the 

 ' Five Gateways of Knowledge, 1 has led many to find a new 

 world of thought and enjoyment in the old region of their five 

 senses. His treatise on Electricity and the Electric Telegraph 2 

 gives a most intelligible account of this wonderful agency ; and 

 the ' Chemistry of the Stars' shows how he could carry the fancy 

 of his readers forward from the results of dry analysis. 



As instances of the extraordinary clearness with which Dr. 

 Wilson illustrated difficult points, I would refer to his expo- 

 sition of the numerical laws of chemistry in the educational 

 treatise just mentioned, which I think the most easily compre- 

 hensible in existence, and to his more popular description of the 

 nervous system, given in Dr. Reid's Life. 



1 Macmillan and Co., Cambridge. 



2 These are printed together, and constitute Part 26 of the 'Travellers' Library.' 



