TO FRANCIS HALLIDAY of Ham, in the county of Surrey, Esquire, for certain improvements on apparatus used in drawing Boots on and off. 11. TO THEODORE JONES of Coleman Street, accountant, for an im provement on the Wheels of Carriages. 18. TO WILLIAM MILLS of Hazelhouse, Bisley, Gloucestershire, gentle- TO WILLIAM CHURCH, Birmingham, for improvements in Printing. TO WILLIAM BUSK, Broad Street, London, Esq. for improvements Nov. 7. To B. NEWMARCH, Cheltenham, for improvements on Fire-Arms. To B. WOODCROFT, Manchester, silk-manufacturer, for his improvements in Wheels and Paddles for propelling boats and vessels. List of Patents granted in Scotland from 9th September to 8th November 1826. 1826, Oct. 10. To JOHN POOLE of Sheffield, in the county of York, shopkeeper, for "certain Improvements in Steam-engine Boilers or Steam Generators; applicable also to the Evaporation of other Fluids." Nov. 2. TO DAVID RAMSAY HAY of the city of Edinburgh, painter, and copartner with George Nicholson, painter in Edinburgh, carrying on business there as painters, under the firm of Nicholson and Hay, for " a new Process in Painting, for producing the appearance of Damask." 8. TO THEODORE JONES of Coleman Street, in the city of London, accountant, for " an Improvement or Improvements on Wheels for Carriages." P. NEILL, Printer. THE EDINBURGH NEW PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. Biographical Memoirs of CHARLES BONNET and HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE. Read to the Royal Institute of France, by Baron CUVIER. IMMEDIATELY MMEDIATELY after the new organization of the Institute, the first Class of Science, by a unanimous resolution, ordained a public eulogium to be pronounced upon the members of the Academy of Science, who had died during that fatal period, when all personal merit, all independent pre-eminence, were odious to authority, and when none were permitted to be praised but the oppressors of the country, and their contemptible satellites *. At the moment when we were meditating the discharge of this honourable office, a multitude of meritorious individuals presented themselves to our view. Among these shone forth with a more intense lustre, not only the happy geniuses, who, in these latter times, have opened up to science paths so new and so extended; but those, also, whose valuable talents have enabled them to diffuse the light of knowledge, and teach men to appreciate its benefits. The Lavoisiers, the Baillys, the Condorcets, were the men who seemed more imperiously to demand our homage: but they were also men whose agitated life and unhappy end, would have aroused the remembrance of events which even yet excite too much grief. To expiate the crimes of that disastrous period, it would have been necessary to repeat their history; and this, we confess, we have not yet acquired sufficient courage to do. The fatal period of the Revolution. JANUARY-MARCH 1827. Pardon us, therefore, ye illustrious shades! if we first present to public recognition such of your rivals, as, from superior prudence, or a happier destiny, kept themselves sheltered from the tempests of which you have been the victims. The day will soon arrive, when we shall fully acquit ourselves of the sacred duty. The hand which has repaired our evils, gradually softens the remembrance of them: it makes this epoch retrograde, if we may so speak: soon we shall no longer be the contemporaries of your executioners, and shall be able to speak of them as history will speak. To-day I shall present a sketch of the life of two celebrated individuals, closely allied by blood, and still more by their mode of life, and the similarity of their labours;-men who, in a country that had experienced convulsions long before ours, had yet commanded the respect of all parties, by their devotedness to science, and by the practice of peaceful virtues. Charles Bonnet, and Horace Benedict de Saussure, the two men to whom Natural History has been indebted in our days for such brilliant advances, and solid improvements, were uncle and nephew,-a happy family, to which a scion already inscribed in our lists, still ensures for one generation more an heirship of talents so rarely to be met with. Such phenomena in families could only happen in those small. states whose independence is secured by the jealousy of greater powers. Confined within a narrow circle, freed of the care of providing for their safety, neither war, nor public offices, nor the other avenues to rapid success, presented sufficient allurements to turn their minds aside from those long and silent labours which lead to celebrity in science. Being to themselves their proper centre, no great metropolis drew away the geniuses. which nature produced among them; while their prudent economy, and the purity of their manners, prevented talents from being stifled by luxury. Such was the city of Geneva since the period of the Reformation; and to all the advantages of its political situation, it added that of speaking the same language as those who, of all the other European nations, have carried civilization, among the upper classes, to the highest pitch, and who, moreover, enjoy that unrestrained liberty of inquiry which the Protestants autho rise even in matters connected with religion. Its laws and its customs, in fine, guaranteed to the profession of letters so high a degree of estimation, that the mere offices of instruction were considered as superior to all others. But if, in this country, human institutions are so favourable to study in general, how much.more powerfully does nature here excite the mind to the contemplation of her economy and laws! How is the traveller struck with admiration, when, on a fine summer day, after having forced his laborious progress over the summits of Jura, he arrives at that pass where the immense basin of Geneva suddenly expands before him; when he sees at a glance that beautiful lake, the waters of which reflect the azure hue of the sky still purer and deeper; that vast expanse of low country, so highly cultivated, and interspersed with such pleasant abodes; those little hills, rising gradually aboye each other, and clothed with so rich a vegetation; those mountains covered with forests of perpetual verdure; the towering ridge of the upper Alps, rising above this superb amphitheatre; and Mont Blanc, the monarch of the mountains of Europe, crowning it with his enormous load of snows, where the arrangement of the masses, and the opposition of the lights and shadows, produce an effect which no description could ever adequately convey to the conception of him who has not beheld this wonderful scene. And this beautiful country, so calculated to strike the imagination, to develope the talents of the poet or the painter, is perhaps still better adapted to awaken the curiosity of the philosopher, and call forth the researches of the naturalist. It is truly here that Nature seems to delight in shewing herself under a multiplicity of aspects. The rarest plants, from those of the temperate climates to those of the frozen zone, are displayed to the botanist within the compass of a few steps. The zoologist may there pursue insects as varied as the vegetation which nourishes them. The lake, from its depth, its extent, and even the violence of its motions, forms to the natural philosopher a sort of sea. The geologist, who elsewhere sees only the external crust of the globe, finds there the central masses rising, and protruding on all hands through their envelopes, to disclose themselves to his view Lastly, the meteorologist can there, at all times, mark the for mation of the clouds, penetrate into their interior, or raise himself above them. But I perceive that, in thus painting the theatre in which the distinguished individuals lived of whom I am about to speak, I have unintentionally presented you with a miniature of their discoveries; and, in fact, their country is in a manner vividly impressed upon their works, even those which are the most comprehensive in their object: nor was it ever left by one of them, and if the other sometimes separated himself from it, it was always. to him the centre and point of comparison to which he referred all that he saw elsewhere;-powerful influence of first habits, of which another of their fellow-citizens has given a different kind of example, which the events that have agitated Europe have rendered too memorable. - CHARLES BONNET was born in 1720, of a rich family, distinguished for the important offices which it had filled. He was intended for the law, and received the education necessary for preparing him to practise that profession. A facility of conception, and a happy imagination, enabled him to make rapid progress in literature and science; but they did not at first permit him to devote himself with delight to the more abstract meditations of philosophy, and still less to the study of all those forms, all those little particular decisions, with which so many codes are filled. This taste for agreeable ideas, for easy, although ingenious, researches, already indicated a disposition favourable to the study of Natural History; and accident threw him entirely into that pursuit. He read one day, in the Spectacle de la Nature, the history of the singular industry of the insect called the Lion Spider, Formica Leo. Vividly impressed with facts equally curious and new to him, he was not satisfied until he had procured one of them; and, in searching for this insect, he found many others which appeared to him not less interesting. He spoke to every body of the new world which had opened itself up to him. Being apprised of the existence of Reaumur's work, he obtained it, after much importunity, from the public librarian, who was at first unwilling to trust it to so young a man. He devoured its contents in a few days, and ran about everywhere in search of the animals with whose history Reaumur had |
