GLEANINGS 
IN 
SCIENCE. 
No. 15. — JHarch, 1830. 
I. — Biographical Sketch of the late Col. Lambton, Superintendent of 
the Trigonometrical Survey of India. 
Amongst the many useful and interesting topics which at our outset we proposed 
the plan of the Gleanings should embrace, none appeared to us more worthy of 
attention than Biography. To collect and record some traces of the career of those 
who, in India, have distinguished themselves, either by their scientific acquirements, 
their useful labours, or their curious researches, has been long a desideratum. Howl 
ever barren an Indian life may appear of incident, it is always interesting to learn 
the little which may be known of those who are remarkable amongst their fellows- 
And in every country the lives of men devoted to the sciences, pass in a noiseless 
tenour, affording little of that bustling incident or developement of character which 
may be thought necessary to excite the reader’s curiosity, or to fix his attention. 
Such men have little to relate beyond facts connected with the progress of their 
enquiries and their victories over difficulties : but even these are far from uninteresting 
to the general reader; While to the student they are highly useful, both as a stimulus 
to improvement in showing what may be done, and as beacons to guide the way in 
showing how. That the biography of those who have been engaged all their lives 
in scientific pursuit may be made interesting even to the unscientific reader, is evi- 
dent, from the success which the last volume of the Library of Entertainin'* Know- 
ledge 1 has met with. And notwithstanding the objections that have been*made to 
what has been called a fanciful division of knowledge into useful and entertaining 
(the critic asserting all knowledge to be entertaining as well as useful,) it is stfll 
certain that the division of biography is more generally entertaining than any other 
branch of knowledge. As our work too has got the character of being more ab- 
struse and less inviting than necessary, we propose to open our present number 
with the lighter subject of biography, though we shall be reduced to the necessity 
of telling a twice told tale. *" y 
Of the many names which might be selected, it would be difficult to find a 
more suitable one for the commencement of our task than that we have chosen * 
we mean rather as regards his well earned fame and general celebrity, than as 
attaching much importance to the very few particulars which are known concern- 
ing him. These are, indeed, unusually scanty: nor would it be possible, perhaps, to 
obtain the attention of the reader for them, were it not that they relate equally to 
the history of that great undertaking in which he spent twenty years of his life 
and by which he gained for himself a rank amongst the first mathematicians of 
his day. We need scarcely inform our readers, that the particulars of our nar- 
rative are taken from a series of letters published in the Madras Government 
Gazette , and reprinted in the Bengal Hurkaru. These letters were written by one 
who lived on terms of intimacy with the subject of them for twenty years. The 
style of them, as well as many of the expressions, seem those of a foreigner not 
quite familiar with the idiom of the English language 2 . Instead, therefore of re- 
printing them, we have recast the whole, and have introduced such remarks as 
» Containing the life of Fergusson . 
2 If our conjecture, as to the author of these letters, be correct, he appears to have 
paid the debt of nature himself very soon after he had performed this last duty to his 
friend’s memory. J 
