OBITUAEY NOTICES OF FELLOWS DECEASED 



Between 30th Nov. 1862 and 30th Nov. 1863. 



Arthur Connell was the eldest son of Sir John Conuell, Judge 

 of the Admiralty Court of Scotland and author of a well-known work on 

 the ]aw of Scotland respecting tithes. He was born in Edinburgh on the 

 30th of November 1794. Having received his early education at the High 

 School of that city, he (in 1808) entered the University, where he studied 

 under Playfair, Leslie, Dugald Stewart, and Hope. Mr. Connell then be- 

 came for a time a student in the University of Glasgow, and having there 

 obtained a Snell Exhibition, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1812. 

 In 1817 he passed Advocate at the Scotch Bar, but never practised ; follow- 

 ing a decided turn for science which had early shown itself, he devoted 

 himself to the pursuit of chemistry, which became his main occupation, 

 and in 1840 he was appointed to the professorship of that science in the 

 University of St. Andrews. In St. Andrews Mr. Connell continued to 

 study and teach his favourite science till 1856, when the fracture of a limb, 

 and its effects upon a constitution already long enfeebled, completely in- 

 capacitated him for active duty. 



Mr. Connell was chosen a Fellow of this Society at the annual election 

 in 1855 ; from 1829 he had been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edin- 

 burgh, in whose ' Transactions ' or in the * Edinburgh Philosophical Journal ' 

 his various scientific memoirs and communications have appeared. Most 

 of his published researches belong to the province of mineral analysis, in 

 which he justly attained a high reputation for skill and accuracy. To him 

 is due the merit of establishing several new mineral species, and of showing 

 tliat in certain minerals baryta exists in combination with silicic acid ; and 

 as an example of his nicety as an analyst, we may refer to his determination 

 of the constitution of Greenockite from a single grain of that mineral. But 

 Mr. Connell' s labours as a chemist were not confined to a single field of 

 inquiry; he was the author of valuable researches on voltaic decompositions, 

 published in the Transactions of the Hoyal Society of Edinburgh ; and he 

 contrived an instrument for ascertaining the dew-point, which is superior 

 in some respects to that generally used. 



Mr. Connell died on the 31st of October 1863. He was of a modest, 

 retiring nature and gentle disposition. To those who enjoyed his private 

 friendship, it was well known that the merit he evinced as an earnest and 

 faithful worker in science was but the manifestation, in that special direction, 

 of the excellent qualities which belonged to his natural character. 



Edward Joshua Cooper, one of our most distinguished amateur 

 astronomers, received the first impulses which made him pursue that 

 science from his mother's early teaching, and from his visits to the Armagh 

 Observatory while at the endowed school of that city. Thence he passed 

 to Eton, and from it to Christ Church, Oxford, where it may be feared 

 that in those days he met little encouragement in his favourite pursuit. 



VOL. XIII. h 



