46 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



parted walked up and down TJllet Road planning our 

 next expedition to Port Erin. He remarked more than 

 once kow lie was looking forward to it. A few davs later 

 liis nappy and useful life was suddenly closed by an 

 apoplectic attack which struck him down as he was 

 leaving for business in the morning and terminated 

 fatally in a few hours. He was thus active to the last 

 both in science and business ; he had a large piece of 

 scientific work in the printer's hands, and many interests 

 and concerns on his mind. He died, if any one did, in 

 harness, and his death, coming thus suddenly in the midst 

 of his various activities, leaves a gap in many relations 

 of life which it will be difficult, if indeed possible, to fill. 



The family of Thompson, I am told, was one of that 

 rapidly disappearing class, in Westmorland, called 

 "statesmen/' viz., farmers cultivating their own land, 

 during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. ]N"ear 

 the end of the latter they also took to banking, but about 

 1800 a fire burnt down the bank, with a large number of 

 securities, and ruined the family. Thomas Thompson, 

 the eldest son, at that time a student of medicine in 

 Durham University, at once took the coach to London, in 

 the hope of getting employment. On the coach he got 

 into conversation with William Allen, F.R.S., of Allen 

 and Hanbury, the chemists, whose assistant he became, 

 and at whose house he met James Phillips, the father of 

 William Phillips, F.R.S., the Geologist. 



Some time after this Thomas Thompson married 

 Frances, the daughter of James Phillips, and settled 

 in Liverpool as a chemist, at first in connection, to 

 some extent, with Messrs. Allen & Hanbury. Frances 

 Phillips must have been a remarkably talented lady, and 

 her house is said to have become a literary and scientific 

 centre in Liverpool, especially amongst the Quaker 



