46 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETr. 



burgh, and took the degree of M.D. in 1839, when only 21 years 

 old. One of his fellow-students at Edinburgh was Edward Eorbes, 

 afterwards, like Percy, one of the Professors at the School of 

 Mines. 



After leaving Edinburgh, Dr. Percy established himself in medical 

 practice in Birmingham, became physician to the Queen's Hospital, 

 and attained to considerable eminence in his profession. His 

 election to the Royal Society in 1846 was due to original experi- 

 ments and researches in pathology. But meantime he was much 

 engaged in metallurgical and chemical studies, and especially in 

 investigations upon the properties of nickel and manganese. Some 

 of his discoveries at this period were the foundation of metallurgical 

 processes now in extensive use. 



On the establishment of the Royal School of Mines in the Jermyn 

 Street Museum in 1851, Dr. Percy was selected as lecturer on 

 metallurgy, a post which he held for 28 years, until the removal of 

 the School to South Kensington in 1879. He gave up the practice 

 of medicine at the same time as he commenced his metallurgical 

 lectures. His position as by far the first metallurgical authority in 

 the country was now acknowledged on all sides, and the work to 

 which, in addition to his lectures, he devoted the greater part of his 

 time during the years that he held the Professorship in Jermyn 

 Street was the production of a great work on metallurgy in general. 

 At the time when he undertook this, there was no comprehensive 

 work on the subject in the English language. The first volume of 

 his ' Metallurgy ' appeared in 1861, and contained general con- 

 siderations on metallurgical processes, a description of fuel and fire- 

 clay, and the metallurgy of copper, zinc, and brass. The second 

 volume, which appeared in 1864, was devoted to iron and steel, the 

 third in 1870, to lead, and the fourth in 1880, to silver and gold. 

 Part of the first volume was reissued as a second edition in 1875. 



It is difficult to over-estimate the importance of this work. A 

 very large portion consisted of descriptions of metallurgical pro- 

 cesses from the writer's own observations, many of these processes 

 having never been described or only imperfectly described previous^, 

 and all were given with great attention to details, and well illus- 

 trated with plans and sections of furnaces, &c. The value of the 

 information may be inferred from the fact that translations of all 

 the volumes, as they appeared, were published both in Erench and 

 German. That this " magnum opus " has never been completed is 

 a source of deep regret to all interested in the progress of the 

 metallurgical art. 



