160 JVecrology. — Dr. WoUaston. 



To Dr. Wollaston every part of science seemed equally familiar } 

 and of him it might perhaps be more truly said than of any philo- 

 sopher who has preceded him, that " nil erat quod non tetigit, nil 

 tetigit quod non ornavit." Astronomy was one of his chief and fa- 

 vorite pursuits — a taste inherited from his father, and cherished by 

 his intimacy with the late Astronomer Royal of Dublin (now Bishop 

 of Cloyne) and the present Astronomer Royal of Greenwich — an in- 

 timacy commenced in early youth at Cambridge, and maintained 

 through life. Science is indebted to him for many ingenious and 

 important speculations ; such are his papers published in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions, on horizontal refractions, and on the horizon- 

 tal refraction and dip of the horizon, containing his curious and in- 

 genious invention of the dip-sector. Among the most remarkable of 

 his astronomical papers, however, is that on the finite extent of the 

 atmosphere, which affords a striking instance of the advantages that 

 may accrue to science by the union of remote branches of knowl- 

 edge in the same mind. The arguments brought forward in that 

 paper in favor of tlie non-divisibility of matter iii infinitum, from as- 

 tronomical phenomena, carry with them at least every semblance of 

 soundness, and afford a singular specimen of his acute and scrutiniz- 

 ing habit of thought ; while the almost miraculous delicacy and cu- 

 rious felicity of his manipulation in the practical departments of sci- 

 ence — that microscopic tact, which in a thousand instances led him, 

 through routes impervious to grosser intellects, to the most striking, 

 unexpected, and novel results — is there exemplified in a remarkable 

 manner, in the minute and apparently insignificant apparatus \^ith 

 which he was enabled to verify his own views, under circumstances 

 which would effectually baffle ordinary instruments and ordinary 

 observers. 



The sister science of optics is even more indebted to Dr. Wollaston 

 than astronomy. His verification of the Huygenian law of double 

 refraction ; his investigation of the refractive and dispersive powers 

 of bodies, as a separate branch of physical inquiry, on which the 

 perfection of the achromatic telescope depends; his discovery of tlie 

 dark lines in the spectrum, since independently observed, with more 

 refined means, and in greater detail, by Fraunhofer ; but chiefly, the 

 ingenious and elegant method practised by him for perfecting the 

 adjustment of the triple achromatic object glass, give him the highest 

 claims to eminence in this department. The instrument on which 

 he tried and perfected this mode of adjustment is now, through his 

 liberality, the property of this society. 



