Obituary. 303 



pit as will just feed the combustion, only a small corresponding quantity 

 of air can pass away by the chimney, and the whole box will soon be 

 full of the hot air or smoke from the fire circulating in it, and rendering 

 it every where of as uniform temperature as if it were full of hot water," 



The above diagram does not give an accurate idea of Dr. Arnott's stove, as 

 commonly manufectured and sold in the shops ; but it illustrates the principle. 

 In those sold in the shops, the exterior casing bears a much smaller proportion 

 to the fuel chamber ; nevertheless, by' the admission of a very small quantity 

 of air to the fire (often not more than what will pass through a goosequill), the 

 heat produced is regulated to the greatest nicety, and the outer casing of the 

 stove never rises to 200°. Much has been said against Dr. Arnott's stove in 

 the Mechanic's Magazine, and the Monthly/ Chronicle (for May), as not being 

 original ; but this is a question altogether apart from its utility. Original in- 

 ventions are very seldom practical ones at the first. 



We consider it right to apprise our readers that a stove or fireplace is 

 expected soon to be made public, which, it is said, will warm as economi- 

 cally as Dr. Arnott's, and ventilate, at the same time, as effectually as an 

 open fireplace. The inventor is Julius Jeffreys, Esq., the inventor of the 

 respirator, whose opinions on the important subject of ventilation will be 

 found in the Architectural Magazine for May. How far he may be able to 

 realise what is promised we cannot yet say ; but we shall not fail to give our 

 readers the earliest information we are able to obtain on the subject. — Cond. 



Art. II. Obituary. 



Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq. — The public has sustained an irre- 

 trievable loss in the death of Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq., F.R.S., of Dow- 

 ton Castle, in Herefordshire, the President of the Horticultural Society of 

 London. A correspondent of the Athencsum, with the signature of J. L. 

 (evidently Dr. Lindley, who is understood to write the botanical and hor- 

 ticultural articles for that journal), has sent the following biographical notice, 

 written with just and excellent feeling, which we copy from the Athenceum of 

 Mayl9., though, at this late period of the month, we have not time previously 

 to ask the editor's permission for so doing : — 



" Mr, Knight was born at Wormsley Grange, near Hereford, on the 10th of 

 October, 1758. He was the youngest son of the Rev. Thomas Knight, a cler- 

 gyman of the Church of England, whose father had amassed a large fortune as 

 an iron-master, at the time when iron-works were first established at Cole- 

 brook Dale. When Mr, Knight was three years old, he lost his father ; and 

 his education was, in consequence, so much neglected^ that at the age of nine 

 years he was unable to write, and scarcely able to read. He was then sent to 

 school at Ludlow, whence he was removed to Chiswick, and afterwards entered 

 at Baliol College, Oxford, It was in the idle days of his childhood, when he 

 could derive no assistance from books, that his active mind was first directed 

 to the contemplation of the phenomena of vegetable life ; and he then acquired 

 that fixed habit of thinking and judging for himself, which laid the foundation 

 of his reputation as an original observer and experimentalist. He used to 

 relate an anecdote of his childhood, which marks the strong original tendency 

 of his mind to observation and reflection. Seeing the gardener one day plant- 

 ing beans in the ground, he asked him why he buried those bits of wood ; being 

 told that they would grow into bean plants, and bear other beans, he watched 

 the event, and, finding that it had happened as the gardener had foretold, he 

 determined to plant his pocket-knife, in the expectation of its also growing and 

 bearing other knives. When he saw that this did not take place, he set him- 

 self to consider the cause of the difference in the two cases, and thus was led 

 to occupy his earliest thoughts with those attempts at tracing the vital phe- 

 nomena of plants to their causes, upon which he eventually constructed so 

 brilliant a reputation. 



