xi 



secure a large bearing surface. Probably the improvements in the 

 manufacture of steel which are associated with the name of Whit- 

 worth have done more for the development of the most modern artil- 

 lery than has either of the features of his system of rifling. His 

 improvements may be broadly said to consist in three points : first, 

 insistance upon obtaining the best material for the purpose in the 

 highest purity; second, in compressing the molten steel in the ingot; 

 third, in forging under a hydraulic press instead of a steam hammer. 

 Whitworth's published writings are comparatively few in number, but 

 these have a permanent interest and will always be instructive. His 

 fame is rather written in iron and steel, and in the daily practice of the 

 mechanics who have been directly or indirectly trained by him, than 

 in the journals of the learned or technical societies. 



J. H. 



Dr. Allen Thomson, one of the most distinguished anatomists and 

 embryologists of his time, was born in Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scot- 

 land, on the 2nd of April, 1809, and died in London at 66, Palace 

 Gardens Terrace, on the 21st of March, 1884, in the seventy-fifth 

 year of his age. 



His father, Dr. John Thomson, was a remarkable man, who at 

 eleven years of age began life as a silk weaver's apprentice. To this 

 trade he was bound for seven years ; and he continued to follow it 

 in the town of Paisley for nearly two years after his apprenticeship 

 had expired. His father, however, seeing that his son " took little 

 interest in his trade," bound him in 1785 (at the age of twenty years) 

 to Dr. White, of Paisley ; and in this medical apprenticeship he con- 

 tinued for three years. Subsequently, he became a pupil, in London, 

 of William Hunter (brother of John Hunter), in his School of Anatomy 

 at Leicester Square; and again returning to Edinburgh in 1793, he 

 became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons there at the age 

 of twenty-eight. Having the year before " entered into engagements 

 to form an alliance in business with Mr. Arrott (a Fellow of the 

 College), he continued to live under Mr. Arrott's hospitable roof till 

 the autumn of 1798 — a period of five years." In 1815 he became a 

 Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh; and in 

 1808 he obtained from the University of King's College, Aberdeen, 

 the degree of Doctor in Medicine. Having first practised in Edin- 

 burgh as a surgeon, he eventually rose to extensive practice as a 

 physician. He was the first occupant of the Chairs of Military 

 Surgery in the University of that city, and subsequently of General 

 Pathology, both of which were founded on his recommendation.* 

 In 1835, at the age of fifty-eight, he retired from active outdoor 



* Sir Alexander Grant's ' Story of the University of Edinburgh,' vol. ii, p. 411. 

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