Proceedings of the British Association. 219 



of Trinity College, Dublin, the father of our excellent colleague 

 Prof. Lloyd, and the founder of that truly illustrious school of accu- 

 rate science in that university, which has given to the world a 

 Robinson, a Hamilton, and a M'Culloch ; of Sir J, Robison, who 

 inherited from his father, the well-known Prof. Robison, his taste 

 for science and its application to the arts ; of Dr. Henry, one of our 

 most distinguished chemists, and only second in reputation to his 

 fellow townsman, Dr. Dalton, whose very recent loss we have occa- 

 sion to deplore, and whose name, under such circumstances, it would 

 be unbecoming to mention in merely a passing notice. 



Dr. Dalton was one of that vigorous race of Cumberland yeomen 

 amongst whom are sometimes found the most simple and primitive 

 habits and manners combined with no inconsiderable literary or sci- 

 entific attainments. From teaching a school as a boy in his native 

 village of Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth, we find him at a subse- 

 quent period similarly engaged at Kendal, where he had the society 

 and assistance of Gough, the blind philosopher, and a man of very 

 remarkable powers, and of other persons of congenial tastes with his 

 own. In 1793, when in his 23rd year, he became Professor of Ma- 

 thematics and Natural Philosophy in the New College in Mosley 

 Street, Manchester, a situation which he continued to hold for a 

 period of six years, and until the establishment was removed to this 

 city, when he became a private teacher of the same subjects, occupy- 

 ing for the purposes of study and instruction the lower rooms of the 

 Literary and Philosophical Society in George Street, rarely quitting 

 the scene of his tranquil and unambitious labours, beyond an annual 

 visit to his native mountains, with a joint view to health and meteo- 

 rological observations. He made his first appearance as an author in 

 a volume of ' Meteorological Observations and Essays,' which he pub- 

 lished in 1793, and which contains the germ of many of his subse- 

 quent speculations and discoveries ; and his first views of the Atomic 

 Theory, which must for ever render his name memorable as one of 

 the great founders of chemical philosophy, were suggested to him 

 during his examination of olefiant gas and carburetted hydrogen 

 gas. His theory was noticed in lectures which he delivered at Man- 

 chester in 1803 and 1804, and much more explicitly in lectures deli- 

 vered at Edinburgh and Glasgow ; it was, however, first made gene- 



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