XXXV 



was manufactured by Mr. Newall. After this successful experiment, 

 of course greater lengths were tried. Ships were specially constructed 

 for cable laying, and arrangements adopted for securing the greatest 

 facilities in paying out. 



Mr. Newall's sagacity was again shown, and he at once invented 

 methods which have never' been improved upon, and which are now 

 universally adopted. In the tank in which the cables were coiled, 

 a cone occupied the centre, and effectually prevented kinks in the 

 paying out, while a " drum brake " was inserted in the paying out 

 apparatus to prevent all undue strains. It has been well said : — 

 " To have established a new industry, to have taken an active part in 

 securing a triumph of applied science which will modify the history 

 of the world, and to have led the way in the development of the 

 refracting telescope is a record of achievement to which few attain, 

 but which does bare justice to the life-work of Robert Stirling 

 Newall." 



Mr. ISTewall was born in 1812. He was D.C.L. of Durham Univer- 

 sity, and was elected a Fellow of this Society in 1875. 



J. N. L. 



John Percy, M.D., who died on the 19th of June last, was born at 

 Nottingham, on the 23rd of March, 1817. At an early age he entered 

 the Medical School of the University *?f Edinburgh, where at twenty- 

 one he took the degree of M.D. He then studied in Paris, making 

 the acquaintance of the leading French chemists of the time, who 

 doubtless directed his mind towards the line of work to which his life 

 was mainly devoted. He practised medicine at Birmingham for a 

 few years, where, coming in contact with directors and managers of 

 works, he was led to take special interest in metallurgy. It is, per- 

 haps, worth remembering that the connexion between therapeutics 

 and metallurgy has been traditional, and that the critical period of 

 both was the middle of the 16th century, when Paracelsus attempted 

 to introduce order into the science of medicine and Georgius Agricola 

 strove to establish the art of metallurgy on a sound basis. 



Dr. Percy's first paper was entitled a " Notice of a New Hydrated 

 Phosphate of Lime," and his second, dealing with the "Management of 

 Monkeys in Confinement," was printed in 1844. It was followed by 

 other papers on medical subjects, but such w T ork soon gave place to the 

 systematic study of metallurgy, in which he might fairly say with an 

 old writer: "An indefatigable labour, the closest inspection, and 

 hands that were not afraid of the blackness of charcoal " had been 

 his " chief masters." There was, indeed, little else than his own 

 patient research to guide him, for the literature of metallurgy up to 

 the time he wrote was sparse in the extreme, as may be gathered 

 from the fact that when Cramer, himself a doctor of medicine, pub- 



/ 



