disposal of it, at a high price, through the coinage.-Featherstonehaugh's Journal, September 1831.

BOTANY.

8 Zygophyllum arboreum of Jacquin.-This species of the Guayacan or Bean-caper tree, is a common native of the province of Carthagena in South America. It grows to the height of 40 feet, and the wood is remarkably dense and heavy, being of greater specific gravity than the most compact oak. The Spanish settlers speak with enthusiasm of its durability. It has been found by experience to be so lasting, when driven as piles into the ground, that they often give it the name of imperishable wood. As it does not contain any gallic acid or tannin, iron-fastenings do not act injuriously upon it. This timber, it is believed, might easily be procured; and it might be worth while to try some piles of it in our sea-piers, in the hope that it would resist the attacks of the minute but very destructive marine insect (Lemnoria terebrans of Leach), the ravages of which have hitherto baffled the ingenuity of our engineers.

List of Patents granted in England, from 2d August to 30th August 1831.

1831.

Aug. 2. To Sir J. C. ANDERSON, Bart. Bultenant Castle, county of Cork, "for certain improved machinery for propelling vessels on water, which machinery is applicable to other useful purposes."

3. To J. HALL, younger, Dartford, engineer, " for an improvement in machinery used in the manufacture of paper." Communicated by a foreigner.

10. To J. M. E. ARDIT, Newman Street, Oxford Street, printer," for a machine or apparatus for drawing, and for copying and redu cing drawings and other objects or subjects, and for taking panoramas." Communicated by a foreigner.

To A. COCHRANE, Esq. Norton Street, Great Portland Street, "for certain improvements in machinery for propelling or moving locomotive carriages, and giving motion to mills and other machinery."

To W. MASON, London, patent axle-tree maker, "for certain improvements in the construction of wheeled carriages.”

11. To D. SELDEN, Liverpool, merchant," for certain improvements

in metallic mills for grinding coffee, corn, drugs, paints, and various other materials." Communicated by a foreigner.

Aug. 13. To A. W. GILLET, Birmingham, “for a new or improved machine or instrument to measure, beat, and give the accents in all the different moods of time, with any degree of velocity required, applicable to the teaching of music." Communicated by a foreigner. 27. To J. PERKINS, Fleet Street, engineer, "for his improvement on his former patent, dated July 2. 1831; making the same applicable to the evaporating and boiling of fluids for certain purposes." 30. To B. Aingworth, Birmingham, button-maker, " for an improvement in the making and constructing of buttons.”

List of Patents granted in Scotland from 15th to 28th March

1832.

1832.

March 15. To Joel Benedict NOTT of Liverpool, Esq. in consequence of a communication made to him by a certain foreigner residing abroad, and invention by himself, for “certain improvements in the construction of a furnace or furnaces for generating heat, and in the apparatus for the application of heat to various useful purposes," being farther improvements upon a patent obtained by him, dated the 4th day of November 1830. TO JOHN ERICSSON of Liverpool, in the county palatine of Lancaster, civil engineer, for an invention of "an improved engine for communicating power to mechanical purposes."

21. To JAMES THOMSON of Gorbals, city of Glasgow, and county of

Lanark, distiller, for an invention of "an improvement on the construction of distilling apparatus, and particularly of the condenser or worm."

28. TO PETER YOUNG of Fenchurch Street, rope and sail maker, in consequence of a communication made to him by a certain foreigner residing abroad, for a new mode of "manufacturing mangel wurzel, for the purpose of producing various known articles of commerce."

TO ELIJAH GALLOWAY of Carter Street, Walworth, in the county of Surrey, engineer, for an invention of "certain improvements on paddle-wheels."

TO HENRY WARNER of Loughborough, in the county of Leicester, hosier, CHARLES HOOD of the same place, frame smith and setter up, and BENJAMIN ABBOT, also of the same place, frame-work knitter, for an invention of "certain improvements upon the machinery now in use for making or manufacturing stockings, stocking-web, or frame-work, knitting-warp web, warp-net, and point-net."

3

THE

EDINBURGH NEW

PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL.

Memoir of WILLIAM ROSCOE, Esq. By Dr THOMAS STEWART TRAILL, F.R.S.E., &c. Communicated by the Author.

"Clarorum Virorum facta moresque posteris tradere antiquitus usitatum, ne nostris quidem temporibus, quanquam incuriosa suorum ætas omisit, quotiens magna aliqua ac nobilis virtus vicit ac supergressa est vitium, parvis magnisque Civitatibus commune, ignorantiam recti et invidiam."-TACITI Vita Agricola.

In the sentence now quoted, Tacitus has justly indicated the true objects of biography; and, although in this humble notice of our late illustrious President*, I do not profess the intention of handing down his character and virtues to posterity (a task fortunately confided to abler hands +), yet I feel satisfied, that this attempt will not be displeasing to a Society of which he was at once the ornament and the head. As our age cannot be justly accused of want of curiosity respecting our contemporaries, it does not deserve to be characterized as ignorant or envious of merit. If, in tracing the career of Mr Roscoe, we find him ris* Read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool in October 1831.

The public will soon have the satisfaction of receiving from the pen of Henry Roscoe, Esq. barrister-at-law, a life of his father, illustrated by selections from an extensive and interesting correspondence with many distinguished characters of his age.

VOL. XIII. NO. XXVI.-OCTOBER 1832.

N

ing, by his own exertions, from obscurity to eminence, that age and that country have some claims to commendation in which the force of genius can overcome the obstacles of birth and fortune, and elevate its possessor to the society of the noblest and wisest of the land.

WILLIAM ROSCOE was born on the 8th of March 1753, in the Old Bowling-green House, which still exists in Mount Pleasant*, and is well known to many persons by the engraving from a drawing by Austin. His parents, in humble but comfortable circumstances, were little able to advance his education; yet anxious for his improvement, at the age of six they sent him to a school, kept by a Mr Martin, for the elementary instruction of children; whence, in about two years, he was removed to the seminary of Mr Sykes, at that time a considerable private school in Liverpool.

The instruction which young Roscoe here received was confined to English reading, writing, arithmetic, and the elements of geometry. At the At the age of twelve years he left school, from which period he may be said to have been, in a great measure, his own instructor, until about the age of sixteen, when he was articled as clerk to Mr John Eyes, a respectable attorney in this town. During the four years that elapsed between his leaving school and entering Mr Eyes's office, he occupied himself with desultory English reading, in cultivating some fields rented by his father, and in frequenting the painting-room of a porcelain manufactory in the neighbourhood, where he amused himself with painting on china.

At that period of his life his English reading appears to have been rather confined. His favourite authors were Shakspeare, Shenstone, the poems of Mrs Catharine Philips, and the Spectator. From the former he imbibed a decided predilection for poetry, and his taste for English composition was probably modelled on the elegant examples contained in the latter. It is curious to trace his attachment to botany and the fine arts to this early period. The phenomena of vegetation, and the cultivation of plants, appear to have made a deep impression on his youthful mind; and in the little cultivator of his father's fields,

* A street in Liverpool.

we can trace the embryo botanist, to whose ardent enthusiasm in after years, we owe our botanic garden, the world the new arrangement of Scitamineæ, and the superb botanical publication on the same beautiful order of plants. The early essays in painting china-ware seem also to have first inspired him with a love of the fine arts, and drew him on to cultivate his taste in the arts of design, in which he not only displayed the knowledge of an intelligent amateur, but such practical proficiency, as might have led to eminence, had his genius not been directed to other channels, as several slight but spirited etchings by his hand, yet in existence, amply testify.

The rudiments of Latin he acquired between the age of sixteen and twenty, by his own unassisted efforts, though at a later period he read several of the best Latin authors in company with his friends the late William Clarke and Richard Lowndes, two young men of Liverpool, equally intent with himself on mental improvement.

I may here mention, it was not until a comparatively later period of his life, and, if I mistake not, after the publication of the Life of Lorenzo had given him celebrity, that he began to study Greek. In a copy of Homer in possession of his family, we find the following note:-" Finished the Odyssey the day I came to Allerton, 18th March 1799.-W. R."

From his fifteenth to his twentieth year, he appears, from some memoranda which he has left, to have studied very assiduously during his leisure hours; and he luckily found some associates, with congenial tastes and habits, of whose friendship he always spoke, to his latest hour, with affectionate regard. Among those the most conspicuous were Mr Edward Rogers, Mr William Clarke, Mr Richard Lowndes, Mr William Neilson, and Mr Francis Holden. To the latter, whose various acquirements and extraordinary talents were in after life the frequent theme of Roscoe's enthusiastic encomiums, he was disposed to attribute his first inclination to the study of modern languages; and he had pleasure in acknowledging, that it was by the advice and encouragement of this young friend, that he devoted himself assiduously to the study of Italian. In his acquisition of the elements of French and Italian, he does not seem to have had any other assistance than the advice and en