MEMOIR OF LUKE HOWARD. 
34 
noticeable a peculiar tenderness of feeling. No one, we think, can peruse the 
memoir of Taylor without perceiving the sympathetic pathos of the editor. It 
is evident that he accompanies with loving admiration the noble sentiments, 
generous impulses, and poetic tenderness of his departed friend. A remarkable 
power of accurate observation, combined with studious habits and a retentive 
memory, enabled him to accumulate from reading and travelling, in which he 
took great pleasure, a rich fund of general as well as scientific knowledge. 
His last illness was marked by characteristic activity of mind, blended with 
the abounding consolations of a sincere Christian faith. Not long before the 
close, with animated emphasis he said, u Already I seem as if I were floating 
in clouds of everlasting light and glory ; eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor 
hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which I now ex¬ 
perience e.” 
He died at his residence near Hornsey, on the 31st of March, and was buried 
at Winchmore Hill, in the ground belonging to the Society of Friends, to which 
body he united himself in early life. 
MEMOIR OF LUKE HOWARD. 
The decease of one of the oldest pharmaceutists in the country claims a few 
words of notice in our Journal. 
Luke Howard died on the 21st of last March, in his 92nd year. It is in¬ 
teresting to look back to the changes which have taken place during his long 
life. In his earliest days, phlogiston reigned supreme in the realms of what was 
then scientific chemistry. The belief in the transmutation of metals still sur¬ 
vived, and in the druggist’s store pulvis crardi Jiumani , oleum lumbricorum , and 
oleum catulorum still occupied a place. He was already a young man when 
Lavoisier revolutionized chemistry by the discovery of oxygen ; when Priestley 
and Cavendish found out the joints of the armour of ignorance. He was in 
the full tide of the busy occupations of life when Davy riveted the attention 
of society at large by his magnificent discoveries; and was the intimate friend 
of Dalton. Iodine, the vegetable alkaloids, and a host of the other most valua¬ 
ble aids to medical skill, were totally unknown until long after. 
It was about the year 1796 that he and the late Mr. Allen, taking the place 
of Mr. Gurney Bevan at Plough Court, first brought science—such as it then 
was—into connection with the preparation of medicines in England. Soon 
after this they jointly entered upon the foundation of a laboratory on a larger 
scale, and for the supply of the trade at large with pure preparations of the 
chemicals then in use. This was first at Plaistow. Mr. Howard afterwards, 
separating from Mr. Allen, removed it to Stratford, where it has been carried 
on up to the present time by his children and grandchildren. 
Chemistry was not, however, Mr. Howard’s most favourite science. In the 
year 1796, he, in conjunction with Mr. Allen and some few other scientific men, 
founded an association for the investigation of natural science, under the title 
of the Askesian Society. They got on the track of some of the most perplexed 
questions of modern science. Their first subject was, “Light: what becomes 
of it when it falls on a surface which does not reflect it?” Several of their 
papers were published, and were valued by the scientific men of the day. 
Mr. Howard found in meteorology, then quite in its infancy, a subject of 
particular interest. Pie set up an observatory at Plaistow, and traced the con¬ 
nection of electricity and temperature with the different forms of the clouds. 
He soon found that the clouds admtited of classification, and his essay on the 
“■ Modifications of the Clouds ” laid the foundation of all modern meteorolo¬ 
gical science. The names which he adopted for them, cumulus , stratus , etc., are 
