OBITUARY NOTICES OF FELLOWS DECEASED. 



Robekt Hunt was born at Devonport, on the 6th of September, 

 1 807, six months after the death of his father, an officer of the Royal 

 Navy, who, together with all the crew of his vessel, was drowned in 

 the Grecian Archipelago. His early education-, received partly in his 

 native town, and partly at Penzance, was brief and inadequate, for 

 when only twelve and a half years of age, he was sent to London and 

 placed with a surgeon in practice there. His medical career appears 

 to have been by no means a happy one. He soon contrived, however, 

 to acquire enough of Latin to qualify him for dispensing prescriptions ; 

 he gained some knowledge of anatomy by attending Brooke's lectnres; 

 and amid the exacting labours of a Fleet Street dispensary he found 

 occasional leisure hours, that enabled him to profit by the use of a 

 good library to which he had been allowed access. For somewhere 

 about eleven years he continued as a druggist's assistant, until at last 

 an illness made it needful for him to return for a season to Cornwall. 

 About tbis time his grandfather's death put him in possession of a, 

 small property on the banks of the River Fowey. With characteristic 

 energy and enthusiasm, he was no sooner master of this source of 

 income than he sold some of the fine old elm-trees on his ground,, and 

 with the proceeds kept himself for some months, during which he 

 tramped all over Cornwall, looking at the scenery and the rocks, but 

 more especially mingling with the peasantry, and gathering from their 

 lips the legends and superstitions that still lingered in that remote 

 western county. Long afterwards this early journey bore fruit in his 

 volume on the " Romances and Drolls of Devon and Cornwall," which 

 went through three editions. Hunt's mind, showed from his boyhood 

 a markedly poetic vein. While still a young man he published by 

 subscription at Penzance his first literary venture, which was a de- 

 scriptive poem, entitled " The Mount's Bay," followed in later life 

 by his volume " The Poetry of Science," and " Panthea, the Spirit of 

 Nature." He interested himself in the formation of a mechanics' 

 institute at Penzance, and himself gave the first of its lectures. 



Hunt's first distinct entry into the domain of scientific research 

 was suggested to him by Daguerre's experiments in the infant art of 

 photography. He had already gained some practical acquaintance with 

 chemistry and chemical methods of enquiry, so that he was in some 

 measure prepared to begin an independent investigation in photo- 

 chemistry. His first paper (on " Tritiodide of Mercury") appeared 



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