62 SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 
who, shaking off the trammels of a too narrow school, is willing to 
allow a place in his philosophy to the teachings of the great cosmic 
harmony which circles around him, and which proclaims through all 
its changes, I, too, am of God. BD peas O14 
SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 
PROFESSOR GEORGE WILSON, M_D., F.R.S.E. 
Death has of late thinned the ranks of Edinburgh’s men of science and letters. 
Some of the last veterans of the old Hdinburgh Review, the foremost of Scottish 
Metaphysicians, and one eminent in her ranks of native Geologists, have rapidly 
followed one another to the tomb; buta sense of sorrow not less intense than 
that which was felt on the painful and sudden loss of Hugh Miller, has been 
occasioned by the death of Dr. George Wilson, the first Regius Professor of 
Technology in the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Wilson is widely known as 
the biographer of Cavendish and Reid; the author of “ Researches on Colour 
Blindness,” and other scientific works; besides numerous valuable papers 
contributed to scientific periodicals, and to the Transactions of the Royal Society 
and other learned bodies of which he was a member. His researches embraced 
a great variety of subjects, and included many discoveries of interest and value; 
among which may be noted his investigations into the history of medical electri- 
city, and his discovery of fluorine in sea-water and in blood. 
Dying, however, in his forty-first year, when, to those who knew him best, he 
seemed only to be ripening for the works of his matured genius: the best of his 
productions very partially indicate the wide range of thought and the original 
capacity of his mind. He has left incomplete the biography of his old friend and 
colleague, Professor Edward Forbes; and many of his papers furnish mere 
glimpses of the original views in his favourite science of Chemistry which he 
had purposed to work out in the leisure of later years he was never destined to 
see. 
In addition to his professorship, Dr. Wilson was Director of the Scottish Industrial 
Museum. Of this national Institution a writer in the Athenewm, has justly 
remarked: “Dr. George Wilson was in no small degree the originator of that 
museum; he gave to it his heart, his genius, and his hopes of success and fame.” 
It would not, indeed, be unjust to say that his life was in some degree the sacrifice 
made by his devotion to that favourite object. Of a warm and generous nature, 
and with the well-tempered enthusiasm of true genius, he threw his whole heart 
into whatever he did; and his loss is mourned in his native city with demonstra- 
tions of public grief rarely manifested with like intensity. His remains were 
followed to the grave by the City Magistrates, the professors of the University, 
and the representatives of scientific societies and public bodies ; and the day of his 
