60 MISOELLANEOTJS. 



J. S. Henslow, F.L.S. and G.S., Professor of Botany id the University of 

 Cambridge. 



Thomas Huxlet, F.RS., Professor of Natural History, Government School 

 of Mines, Jermyn Street. 



John Lindlet, F.R.S. and L.S., Professor of Botany in University College 

 London. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



DR. GEORGE PEACOCK. 



Among recent blanks in the circle of English Science and Literature, the 

 death of the late Dean of Ely is one which cannot fail to be deeply felt by all -who 

 appreciate knowledge, learning, and the practical power of a cultivated intellect 

 in their less showy, but most substantial forms. We abridge from a biographical 

 sketch in the pages of the Athenaeum some notes regarding the career of this 

 ditingi::ished English mathematician, who has contributed in some very important 

 respects to the advancement of his favorite studies, and their practical bearing on 

 the progress of his age. 



Dr. George Peacock was a student of Tiinity College, Cambridge, and took his 

 B.A. degree at that University in 1813, with peculiar distinctions, Sir John 

 Herschel being the senior wrangler of that year, and George Peacock the second. 

 One familiar with the Cambridge system, and with the recent history of the 

 science in which he so distinguished himself, thus sketches the ingenuous student 

 in his earlier contact with the formal tests and stimulants of University com- 

 petitions for honors: — Peacock's mind was, in some respects, differently framed 

 from those of the young men who usually distinguish themselves. The University 

 examinations cultivate two kinds of power: acquisition of knowledge, called 

 bookwork, and solution of such applications as can be done by good heads in a 

 few minutes, dignified by the name at problems. It is of course impossible in the 

 hurried examinations, to try how the student stands, upon points which would give 

 a finished mathematician an hour or two of thought. Accordingly, those young 

 men, however deeply they may think, who do not possess, or cannot acquire, a 

 certain trick which we call problem-knack, cannot show themselves among the 

 highest wranglers, unless their amount of digested reading be very great indeed. 

 We once knew a young aspirant who was in despair at finding that comrades, 

 to whom he used to explain first principles and elucidate difiicultie'*, could do 

 problems much faster and better than himself: by practice, however, he caught 

 problem-knack, and took a high degree. Peacock was on of those who, as stories 

 ran in our undergraduate day, " never did a single problem." A sa'castic review 

 of Cambridge men and things, which made some noise at the time, reckoned him up 

 thus: — "He has read three times as much mathematics as any man in Europe 

 but has not a spark of originality." He lived to shew the highest and the raiest 

 origiuality of speculative thought: the power of seeing a whole science as it is to 

 be, and lending aid in placing it upon its proper basis. Hundreds of those who 

 would have beaten him hollow at Cambridge problems are wholly unfit to attempt 



