John MacCulloch, F. R. S., at Addiscombe: The lectureships in chemistry and geology

1980 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-183 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Unpublished Manuscript ◽  
Scientific Competence ◽  
Geological Work ◽  
Teaching Commitment

The eminent Georgian scientist John MacCulloch (1773—1835) is remembered today chiefly as a practical geologist but his many publications show that he also made notable contributions in such fields as chemistry, medicine and natural history; indeed his wide scientific competence seems to have been a significant factor in his election to Fellowship of the Royal Society, for it is noted on his certificate of application that he was ‘very conversant with various branches of science’. Elsewhere it is recorded that MacCulloch ‘was as willing to impart information as he was eager to acquire it’ and in this context his activities as a teacher in the East India Company’s Military Seminary at Addiscombe deserve study: first, because the later part of his life, during which he taught geology, is poorly understood; and secondly, since his last two geological books were affected by his teaching commitment at Addiscombe. In this paper MacCulloch’s connexion with the college is investigated using hitherto unpublished manuscript records and some of his geological work is re-assessed in terms of the facts revealed.

Edward Heron-Allen FRS (1861–1943): a review of his scientific career, with an annotated bibliography of his foraminiferal publications

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Hodgkinson ◽  
John E. Whittaker
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Annotated Bibliography ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Scientific Career ◽  
History Museum ◽  
First Time

ABSTRACT: In spite of his many other interests, Edward Heron-Allen also worked for nearly 50 years as a scientist on minute shelled protists, called foraminifera, much of it in an unpaid, unofficial capacity at The Natural History Museum, London, and notably in collaboration with Arthur Earland. During this career he published more than 70 papers and obtained several fellowships, culminating in 1919 in his election to the Royal Society. Subsequently, he bequeathed his foraminiferal collections and fine library to the Museum, and both are housed today in a room named in his honour. In this paper, for the first time, an assessment of his scientific accomplishments is given, together with a full annotated bibliography of his publications held in the Heron-Allen Library. This is part of a project to produce a bibliography of his complete publications, recently initiated by the Heron-Allen Society.

The Royal Society Specimens from the Chelsea Physic Garden, 1722-1799

1993 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-224 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Important Link ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Herbarium Collections ◽  
Important Evidence

The deed of conveyance of 1722, by which Sir Hans Sloane gave the Society of Apothecaries control of their ‘Physick Garden at Chelsey’ in perpetuity, forged an important link between the Apothecaries and the Royal Society, one that has lasted to the present day. For the next 75 years the Apothecaries paid an annual tribute of dried plant specimens to the Royal Society as proof that they were continuing to use the garden for its proper purpose. These specimens, which have survived the centuries with remarkably little damage, now provide important evidence of what was being grown in the garden at the time and may also be nomenclaturally important as representing plants given botanical names by Philip Miller in 1768. A careful search in the herbarium collections of the Department of Botany in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, where the Royal Society specimens are now held, has resulted in the location of all but a small number of the 3750 specimens that were sent. Tracing them has not been easy for a number of reasons, not least because they are now dispersed among the several million specimens in the Museum’s collections. The names of the plants used by the Apothecaries in the lists that were the starting point for the search were those current at the time, hence of pre-Linnaean character, and had first to be linked to present-day names before the work could begin. Some lists of names were found to be inaccurate and some were entirely misleading.

scholarly journals The English Connection: Jacob and Johann Philipp Breyne, James Petiver and Plants: The Correspondence between the Breynes and Petiver from the 1690s

2022 ◽  
Vol 128 (5) ◽  
pp. 167-198
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Pękacka-Falkowska
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central

The article discusses the hitherto unknown correspondence between the Danzig (present-day Gdańsk) botanist Jacob Breyne, his son Johann Philipp Breyne, and James Petiver in the last decade of the seventeenth century. Their correspondence documents contacts between one of the most important naturalists of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the seventeenth century and members of the Royal Society. The content of the letters reveals how books, naturalia and various artefacts circulated between Western and East-Central Europe. It also reveals the principles of reciprocity and friendship followed by those who conducted inquiries into natural history.

scholarly journals VI. A botanical invitation forward an history of the plants of Swisserland; by Dr. John Jacob Scheuchzer, M. D. F. R. S. Sent to Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. Pr. R. S. To be communicated to the Royal Society. Translated by Mr. Zollman, F. R. S

1731 ◽  
Vol 37 (421) ◽  
pp. 219-220
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
History Of

It is not my Intention to enter into a long Detail of what I have hitherto performed in Natural History, both in general, and that of Swisserland in particular, left I might seem guilty of Vanity even in merely relating it.

The Geological Work of the Cambridge Expedition to the East African Lakes, 1930–31

1934 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. E. Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
East African ◽  
African Lakes ◽  
Geological Work ◽  
Lake Deposits ◽  
East African Lakes

From November, 1930, till October, 1931, the Cambridge Expedition led by Dr. E. B. Worthington, carried out biological work on the Kenya and Uganda lakes. Owing to a grant from the Royal Society I was able to accompany the Expedition as geologist, with the object of studying the Pleistocene lake deposits and making collections of fossils from them.

scholarly journals V. An account of books. I. An essay toward a natural history of the earth, and terrestrial bodies, especially minerals: As also of the sea, rivers, and springs. With an account of the universal deluge, and of the effects that it had upon the earth. By John Woodward, M. D. Professor of Physick in Gresham College, and Fellow of the Royal Society. Printed for Ric. Wilkin at the King's Head in St. Paul's Church-yard. 1695. Octavo. 2. An account of a paper, entituled, archibaldi pitcarnii, M. D. disser

1695 ◽  
Vol 19 (217) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Great Weight ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of

V. An account of books. I. An essay toward a natural history of the earth, and terrestrial bodies, especially minerals: As also of the sea, rivers, and springs. With an account of the universal deluge, and of the effects that it had upon the earth. By John Woodward, M. D. Professor of Physick in Gresham College, and Fellow of the Royal Society. Printed for Ric. Wilkin at the King's Head in St. Paul's Church-yard. 1695. Octavo. 2. An account of a paper, entituled, archibaldi pitcarnii, M. D. dissertatio de Febribus, &c. The Author of this Book having with great Industry, and no less Success, made Enquiry into many considerable Parts of Nature, hath thought fit here to set forth an Account of several of his Observations, and of certain Conclusions which he hath drawn from them, whereof many are indeed of great weight and moment, but all in a compendious manner, as intending this Discourse only as a Prœlude to one-much larger, and to comply with the Importunities of some Persons of Worth, who .requested a brief Account of these things from him, for their present Satisfaction, until his Affairs should permit the compleating of his Greater Work, which he promiseth, with a further Proof both of these, and of others not yet proposed.

Joule's 1840 manuscript on the production of heat by voltaic electricity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto de Andrade Martins
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Detailed Comparison ◽  
Electric Currents ◽  
Full Paper ◽  
Unpublished Manuscript ◽  
Philosophical Magazine ◽  
First Time

In 1840, James Prescott Joule submitted to the Royal Society a paper describing experimental research on the heat produced by electric currents in metallic conductors, and inferring that the effect was proportional to the resistance of the conductors and to the square of the intensity of the current. Only an abstract of this paper was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society , although a full paper with a similar title was printed in the Philosophical Magazine in 1841. Several authors have assumed that the content of the 1841 publication was the same as the rejected 1840 paper; however, the unpublished manuscript has been found within the archives of the Royal Society and is published here for the first time, along with a detailed analysis and comparison with the 1841 paper. The unpublished version is much shorter, and is different in certain respects from the published article. A detailed comparison throws light on several shortcomings of the unpublished version. The present work also studies the assessment of Joule's paper by the Royal Society, and elucidates the roles of Peter Roget and Samuel Christie in this connection.

scholarly journals I. Note respecting the circulation of gasteropodous Mollusca and the supposed aquiferous apparatus of the Lamellibranchiata

1860 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 192-196
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Direct Observation ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Number Of Species ◽  
Sexual Glands ◽  
Aquiferous System

A memoir upon the aquiferous system and the oviducts of Lamellibranchiate Mollusks by Messrs. Rolleston and Robertson, was read before the Royal Society at the Meeting on the 3rd of February, 1859. The abstract of this memoir, contained in the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History,’ reached me in the month of July; and I was not a little surprised to find that a structure which I had so elaborately stu­died in the course of my various journeys to the sea-shore, and which I had carefully described in a number of species, was something quite different from what I had imagined it to be. "Without entering into minute anatomical details, which would not tend to elucidate the question, I find that Messrs. Rolleston and Robertson consider that the organs, the ducts, and the orifices supposed to be the ovaries or their excretory ducts, are, in fact, nothing but an aquiferous appa­ratus, and that the openings placed on each side of the foot are the excretory orifices of this system. They discover elsewhere the ducts whose office is to convey away the products of the genital glands. The enunciation of an opinion so opposed to what I, in common with many other authors, had maintained, seemed to require a recur­rence to direct observation. But on repeating my examination of Cardium edule , Tellina solidula , Mactra stultorum and Donax anatina , I have precisely verified my previous conclusions. On throwing injections into the genital orifices, the sexual glands have become turgid; and on examining fragments of such injected genital glands microscopically, the injected substance was seen mixed with the ova or spermatozoa. These facts may be observed with especial ease in Cardium edule .

scholarly journals ‘Vividness’ in english natural history and anatomy, 1650–1700

2012 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Wragge-Morley
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
John Ray ◽  
The Mind ◽  
It Knowledge ◽  
The Brain

This article concerns the use of rhetorical strategies in the natural historical and anatomical works of the seventeenth-century Royal Society. Choosing representative works, it argues that naturalists such as Nehemiah Grew, John Ray and the neuroanatomist Thomas Willis used the rhetorical device known as ‘comparison’ to make their descriptions of natural things vivid. By turning to contemporary works of neurology such as Willis's Cerebri Anatome and contemporary rhetorical works inspired by other such descriptions of the brain and nerves, it is argued that the effects of these strategies were taken to be wide-ranging. Contemporaries understood the effects of rhetoric in terms inflected by anatomical and medical discourse—the brain was physically altered by powerful sense impressions such as those of rhetoric. I suggest that the rhetoric of natural history could have been understood in the same way and that natural history and anatomy might therefore have been understood to cultivate the mind, improving its capacity for moral judgements as well as giving it knowledge of nature.

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