I 
431 
excise in this city. His appointment as manager at the New Mills 
must have been about 1729, as the rules of the Excise at that time 
did not allow of a longer residence than four years in the same 
locality. At this time he marries his first wife who would then be 
seventeen years old (his own age being twenty-six years), and she dies 
at the early age of forty-seven. Wo have no evidence of the date 
of his second marriage; but supposing that the usual time elapsed 
between the death of the first Mrs. Arderon and his second mar- 
riage, it would have been in 1 7 GO (she then being twenty-nine and 
himself fifty-seven), she dies in 1702, he surviving her five years. 
In the articles of agreement with the New Mills proprietors the 
following passage occurs : — “And the said proprietors for several 
years last past have employed the said William Arderon as their 
clerk and bookkeeper; and he having hitherto discharged the 
trusts reposed in him to their satisfaction, they the said proprietors 
have agreed with the said William Arderon to continue him the 
said William Arderon in their service as their clerk or bookkeeper, 
from the twentyfifth day of December last past for the term and 
time of twenty years And for his care and trouble the 
proprietors agree to pay him the yearly sum of .£60, and to provide 
him with a suitable dwellinghouse.” The date of this agreement 
is January, 1750. 
« 
He was probably made an F.E.S. about 1743, and between that 
period and 1750 lie contributed twenty papers to the ‘ Transactions,’ 
all of them clearly indicating him to have been a man of acute 
powers of observation. 
As it is now of more interest to know what he did than what he 
was, I propose to give some extracts from his published papers, 
and also from some unpublished MSS. : for the latter 1 am indebted 
to Mr. James lieeve, the Curator of our Museum. 
As stated in the brief notice of his life, his microscopic obser- 
vations were published in Baker’s works on the microscope, who 
also copied his original figures, Arderon being a very fair draughts- 
man, as I. think you will admit, on inspecting the drawings I have 
now the pleasure of placing before you. His papers in the. ‘Trans- 
actions’ are arranged under various heads, and not in accordance 
with their dates. 
The first paper to which I will call your attention is a description 
of an hygrometer : it will be found in vol. x, page 453 of the 
