Ill 



Mr. John Arthur Phillips, F.G-.S., F.C S., and M.T.C.E., who died 

 at his home in London throngh a sudden attack of illness on the 5th 

 of January, 1887, was one of those devotees of scientific inquiry who 

 deserve to have a longer portion of life blest with that leisure which 

 is needed for research. 



He was born in the neighbourhood of Polgooth Mine, near St. 

 Austell, Cornwall, and appears to have taken as a boy a hereditary 

 interest in mining and metallurgical matters, for his grandfather was 

 the manager of that noted old tin mine, and was quoted as " its very 

 intelligent director," by Mr. J. Hawkins, F.R.S., and as his chief 

 informant in 1791, on the phenomena of that remarkable locality 

 which was described by Mr. Hawkins in the first volume of the 

 'Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall' in 1818. 



Mr. Phillips' attention was drawn in early youth to observations 

 and experiments connected with electricity and the deposition of 

 metallic copper. We may trace this in part to the influence of the 

 Polytechnic Society of Cornwall and its useful annual exhibitions at 

 Falmouth, as well as to the example and studies of the late Robert 

 Were Fox, F.R.S., one of its founders. Young Phillips soon becoming 

 desirous of a more thorough grounding in the metallurgical sciences, 

 entered as a student at the Ecole des Mines, passed its curriculum 

 with credit, and for a short time was intrusted with the charge of a 

 coal mine in the South of France. 



On returning to England Mr. Phillips was employed in taking a 

 practical part in the evaporation experiments on steam coals carried 

 out with a Cornish boiler at the Civil Engineers College at Putney, 

 for the Admiralty, the results of which were embodied in the well- 

 known " Report." This work was followed up by various papers on 

 chemical and metallurgical subjects, among which one of the most 

 generally interesting was a " Chemical Examination of the Metals 

 known to the Ancients " ('Journal of the Chemical Society,' 1852, 

 and 'Liebig's Annalen,' vol. 81). 



For many years past the rich silver-lead lodes of Pontgibaud in 

 the Auvergne have been worked by a partly English Company, and 

 Mr. Phillips was engaged for a considerable time, between 1855 and 

 1860, on behalf of the Messrs. Taylor of London, the managers, in 

 experimenting and erecting furnaces for the treatment of those ores. 

 He also for a few years acted as a consulting mining engineer, taking 

 the opportunity of visiting and describing the singular gold-bearing 

 deposits of Nova Scotia, and the more important gold fields of Cali- 

 fornia, his notes on which were published in the 1 Proceedings of the 

 Royal Society,' 1868. 



But it was not until his metallurgical aptitude was proved by suc- 

 cess as a manager that Mr. Phillips obtained the leisure to take up 

 independent studies. The profitable results which attended the co- 



d 



