■^IS LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. 



the Nature of Limbs, delivered, in 1849, before the Eoyal Institu- 

 tion of Great Britain. It has the Professor's autograph as before, 

 and, besides, a multitude of his pencillings, evidently made in an 

 eager and rapid perusal of the book. 



A memento of Professor Farish, Jacksonian Professor of ISTatttral 

 and Experimental Philosophy, comes next. His career, however, 

 began eai'lier in the University than Whewell's or Sedgwick's, but 

 he was still giving his lectures in 1836, and I had the satisfaction of 

 being present at some of them. They were on the practical applica- 

 tion of mechanism to manufactures, to mining, ship building, forti- 

 fication, and other matters. You might have thought it was Polo- 

 nius himself who was lecturing, as you listened to the professor's 

 simple, but earnest and effective language, and saw him suit the 

 action to the word at every step, by constructing the part of the 

 apparatus required, or exhibiting in use the implement spoken of. 

 He was then quite an aged person, and the tones of his voice were 

 those of an old man ; but he spoke with vigour, and showed an 

 unflagging enjoyment of his subject. His happy oval countenance 

 ever wore a smile. At the close of each demonstration, he would, 

 in a playful way, suddenly break uj) the structure which he had con- 

 trived for his purpose, separating it rapidly into its constituent parts ; 

 or if it should happen to have been a mould for the casting of a 

 cannon or a bell, or the wall of a fortified town, or an isolated 

 foi'tress, that he had been expatiating on, he would run his wand 

 ruthlessly through the moist sand which had been used, and reduce 

 the whole in a moment to a state of chaos, like a child demolishing 

 at a blow, the tower of cards a moment before so laboriously built 

 up. To enable him to efiect promptly his numerous demonstrations, 

 the professor had a wonderful collection of cog-wheels, cylinders, 

 bars, pulleys, cranks, screws, and blocks, and an ingenious method 

 of extemporizing, as it were, then and there, a contrivance for each 

 experiment, by means of clamps which fastened together firmly and 

 quickly, the several parts of the required apparatus, which part?, 

 presently taken all to pieces again, would do duty equally well imme- 

 diately afterwards in some other combination. When everything 

 was ready, the Professor would give the word of command to his 

 attendant in these terms : ".Roger, make it go ! " Water was then 

 turned on, and the desired movement instantly followed. The 

 apparatus had been long in use, and sometimes there was a slight 



