X 



many. But those who had the needful ability, and had the power of 

 work in them, followed him with the utmost interest, and generally 

 pronounced him, when in his prime at least, the best professor in the 

 Faculty of A^rts. Personally he was much beloved by his students. 

 He was a man of genial temperament and kindliness of heart ; and he 

 was ever ready to help deserving students, and to encourage those 

 whom difficulties might have deterred from presevering in their work. 

 When acting as substitute for Professor Forbes in the Chair of Natural 

 Philosophy, he discovered a power of popular lecturing of which 

 he did not seem to have been himself aware, and which was quite 

 new to his friends and even to his students. The lectures he fre- 

 quently delivered before the Philosophical Institution were one result 

 of this discovery. Of all the departments of physics with which 

 he dealt, Acoustics was the one in which he took the greatest delight, 

 probably because his skill as a violinist went hand-in-hand with 

 his ability as a mathematician. Perhaps the most successful of 

 his lectures were those on the lives and labours of eminent 

 natural philosophers, as Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. The literary 

 finish, the sparkle of wit, and the soundness of judgment by which 

 these lectures were characterised make it a cause of regret that his 

 efforts in literature were generally so strictly professional. Of his 

 contributions to the Proceedings of the Royal Societies of London and 

 Edinburgh and to the Philosophical Society of Cambridge, twenty-six 

 papers are particularly specified in the catalogue of the first-mentioned 

 scientific body. He published works on " The Theory of Heat," in 

 1837 and 1842; treatises on "Algebra," in 1839 and 1860; and in 

 1873, an " Introduction to Quaternions," conjointly with his colleague, 

 Professor Guthrie Tait. The introductory and valedictory addresses 

 which he occasionally delivered to his classes, sometimes dealt with 

 the question of University reform. On this subject his views inclined 

 to Conservatism. Two of these lectures were published — the one in 

 1854, entitled "The Scottish Universities suited to the Scottish 

 People," and the other in 1855, with the title, " How to improve the 

 Scottish Universities." Almost his latest work, and that which is 

 most worthy of his reputation as a mathematician, is the article on 

 "Algebra," contributed to the ninth edition of the " Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica.' He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 

 1838. 



Sir Thomas Larcom, who died at Heathfield, Fareham, Hants, on 

 June 15, was the last survivor of that remarkable band of officers of 

 the Royal Engineers, many of whom were Fellows of this Society, 

 whose names will never be forgotten in connexion with the Ordnance 

 Survey of Ireland. That Survey, the model in its grand comprehen- 



