recent and too sudden to afford the opportunity, if indeed the effort could, under these painful circumstances, have been made, of collecting the materials for a narrative which might render adequate justice to his superior merits as an artist, and to his exemplary character as a man. This tribute to his memory must be reserved for a period when his biographer will be able to review the subject more extensively, and with more calm deliberation.

FRANCIS BAUER was born at Feldsberg, in Austria, on the 4th of October, 1758. While yet a boy he lost his father, who held an appointment as painter to Prince Lichtenstein; so that the care of his education devolved upon his mother. He manifested very early a talent for botanical drawing; and the first published production of his pencil, at the age of thirteen, was a figure of the Anemone pratensis, appended to a work of Stoerck. He came to England in the year 1788, and was about to proceed to Paris; when, on the eve of his intended departure, he was offered by Sir Joseph Banks the appointment of draughtsman at the Royal Gardens at Kew, a proposal which induced him to relinquish his intention of leaving England. He took up his residence near those gardens, and he continued to dwell, during the remainder of his life, in their neighbourhood. The salary of the new office which Mr. Bauer held was defrayed by Sir Joseph Banks during his own life, and its continuance after his decease was provided for by his will.

Mr. Bauer, in fulfilment of his engagement, made numerous drawings and sketches of the plants in the garden; and these are now preserved in the British Museum. A selection from his drawings was published in 1796, under the title of "Delineations of Exotic Plants cultivated in the Royal Gardens at Kew," containing in all thirty plates of different kinds of heaths. His drawings have also illustrated several papers published in the Linnæan Transactions, and particularly those of Mr. Brown. The 13th volume of that work contains a paper by Mr. Bauer on the Ergot of Rye, drawn up from materials collected between the years 1805 and 1809; and the plate which illustrates it is derived from drawings forming part of an extensive series in the British Museum, illustrating the structure of the grain, the germination, growth and developement of wheat, and the diseases of that and other Cerealia. This admirable series of drawings constitutes perhaps the most splendid and important monument of Mr. Bauer's extraordinary talents as an artist, and of his skill in microscopic investigation. The subject was suggested to him by Sir Joseph Banks, who was engaged in an inquiry into the disease of corn known by the name of blight; the part of Mr. Bauer's drawings which relates to that disease was published in illustration of Sir Joseph's memoir on the subject, and has been several times reprinted with it.* Mr. Bauer himself gave, in the volume of the Philosophical Transactions for 1823, an account of

* See Phil. Mag., First Series, vol. xxi, p. 320.-Edit.

his observations on the Vibrio tritici of Gleichen, with the figures relating to them; and another small portion of his illustrations of the diseases of corn has since been published by him in the Penny Magazine for 1833. His figures of a somewhat analogous subject, the apple-blight, and the insect producing it, accompany Sir Joseph Banks's memoir on the introduction of that disease into England, in the second volume of the Transactions of the Horticul tural Society.

Mr. Bauer had commenced, before the close of the last century, a series of drawings of Orchideæ, and of the details of their remarkable structure, to which he made additions from time to time, as opportunities offered, nearly to the termination of his life. A selection from these, which forms one of the most beautiful and extensive series of his botanical drawings, was lithographed and published by Professor Lindley, between the years 1830 and 1838, under the title of "Illustrations of Orchidaceous Plants."

A paper by Mr. Bauer, entitled "Some experiments on the Fungi which constitute the colouring matter of the Red Snow discovered in Baffin's Bay," was published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1820. By mixing the snow containing these fungi with water, he found that they could be made to vegetate, but that they produced new fungi of a green instead of a red colour. By exposure to excessive cold the primitive fungi are killed, but their seed still retains vitality, and, if immersed in snow, which appears to be their native soil, they reproduce new fungi, which are generally of a red colour. The Philosophical Transactions for 1823, contains the paper by Mr. Bauer already alluded to, entitled "Microscopical Observations on the Suspension of the Muscular Motions of the Vibrio tritici," which forms the Croonian Lecture for that year. This minute worm, which infests wheat, and is the immediate cause of that destructive disease called the Ear Cockle or Purples, congregates in immense numbers in the substance of the grains thus diseased, forming masses of a white and apparently glairy mucus, which, when immersed in water, separate and exhibit, under the microscope, the worms in lively motion. After they have become perfectly dry, and apparently lifeless, they may be readily revived by being moistened with a drop of water, when they become as lively as before, Mr. Bauer determined, by a series of experiments, that the ova of these worms are conveyed into the cavities of the germens by the circulating sap. On inserting some of the worms into sound grains of wheat, and allowing them to germinate, he found the worms, in different stages of their growth, in the stalk, and ultimately in the germens of the new plant.

In the year 1816 he commenced lending the assistance of his pencil to Sir Everard Home, in the various anatomical and physiological investigations in which the latter was engaged; and in the course of ten or twelve years furnished, in illustration of Sir Everard's numerous papers in the Philosophical Transactions more

than a hundred and twenty plates, which were afterwards reprinted in his "Lectures on Comparative Anatomy." These plates, which form together the most extensive series of Mr. Bauer's published works, embraced a great variety of important subjects, chiefly in microscopic anatomy, and afford abundant evidence of his powers of observation and skill in depicting the most difficult objects. It is this rare and previously almost unexampled union of the observer and the artist that has placed Mr. Bauer in the first rank of scientific draughtsmen. His paintings, as the more finished of his productions may well be termed, are no less perfect as models of artistic skill and effect, than as representations of natural objects.

He died at his residence on Kew Green, on the 11th of December last, in the 83rd year of his age.*

Sir ASTLEY PASTON COOPER, Bart., was the fourth son of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, of Yarmouth, in Norfolk. His mother was a daughter of James Bransby, Esq., of Shottisham, and was known as the authoress of a novel entitled "The Exemplary Mother." Sir Astley was born at Brooke, in the same county, on the 23rd of August, 1768. Even in his boyhood he was noted for his bold and enterprising spirit, the sociability and kindness of his disposition, and for the animation with which he entered into all the sports of his juvenile companions. After receiving from the village schoolmaster, and from his father, who was a good scholar, some portion of classical instruction, he was placed, at the age of fifteen, with Mr. Turner, a surgeon and apothecary at Yarmouth. Here he remained but a few months, and was then sent to London, and bound apprentice to his uncle, Mr. William Cooper, one of the surgeons of Guy's Hospital, but was soon after transferred, by his own desire, to Mr. Cline, who had already attained great eminence, and was surgeon of St. Thomas's Hospital. This connexion afforded him ample opportunities of acquiring professional knowledge, under the guidance of a master distinguished by a truly philosophical mind, and for whom his pupil always felt the most profound regard and veneration. Young Cooper's labours in the wide field of observation thus open to him, both in the hospital and dissectingroom, were unremitting; and the practical information he there acquired formed the solid basis of his future fame. He made a short visit to Edinburgh in 1787, and, although only in his nineteenth year, was a distinguished member of the Royal Medical Society of that place. On his return to London, Mr. Cline, who was the teacher of anatomy, physiology, and surgery, at St. Thomas's Hospital, appointed him as demonstrator of anatomy, and soon after gave up to him a part of the anatomical lectures. Sir Astley also gained the consent of Mr. Cline and the other surgeons of the hospitals of Guy and St. Thomas, to give a course of lectures on the principles

The above account is chiefly an abridgement of that contained in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society for 1841, p. 101.

and practice of surgery, a subject which had previously only formed a part of the anatomical course. He had now full scope for the display of those talents which afterwards shone forth on the wider theatre of the world, in a profession of which he became the brightest ornament. At first he was attended only by fifty students; but his class soon increased to four hundred, which was by far the largest that had been known in London. His popularity as a teacher rapidly increased he made no attempts at displays of oratory, but always studied to render the subject which he treated as plain and intelligible as possible to his hearers, wisely avoiding distracting their attention by entering on controversial topics connected with physiology.

On the close of 1791, the year he commenced as a lecturer, he married the daughter of Thomas Cock, Esq., of Tottenham, who was a distant relation of Mr. Cline; but as a proof of his constant solicitude never to neglect the performance of any public professional duty, it is remembered that on the evening of the day on which the marriage ceremony was performed he delivered as usual his lecture, without the slightest intimation to his class of what had happened in the morning; and even at the time when he was most fully engaged in this exceedingly laborious practice, he never omitted to deliver his regular lecture at the hospital.

In 1792, after spending some months at Paris, and attending the lectures of Dessault, at the Hotel Dieu, and also those of Chopart, he commenced practice in London, taking up his residence in the city, where he dwelt for many years before he removed to the west end of the town. The popularity he enjoyed as a surgeon, and the extent of his practice, have probably surpassed that of any of his predecessors and the large fortune which he acquired was the just and honourable reward of distinguished merit and the most unremitting application.

Sir Astley Cooper was elected a Fellow of this Society on February the 18th, 1802. He had previously contributed to the Philosophical Transactions two papers: the first entitled "Observations on the Effects which take place from the Destruction of the Membrana Tympani of the Ear," and the second containing "Further Observations on the same subject; together with an Account of an Operation for the removal of a particular kind of Deafness."† The operation of puncturing the membrana tympani for the relief of that species of deafness which arises from an obstruction of the Eustachian tube, suggested itself from observing that, in several cases, an aperture in the membrane did not essentially diminish the powers of the ear, and that even its total destruction by disease is not followed by total deafness. Several cases are described in which the opera

• Phil. Trans. for 1800, Part I, p. 151. [Phil. Mag., First Series, vol. viii, p. 359.-EDIT.]

Phil. Trans. for 1801, Part II, p. 435. [Ib. vol. x, p. 86, xi, p. 268.—Ed.]

tion proved successful; but of course, when deafness proceeds from any other cause, the operation is not likely to be of the least benefit. The other professional publications of Sir Astley are exceedingly numerous; they all bear the stamp of the peculiar character of his mind simple and unaffected in point of style, and without pretension to elegance, they contain a plain relation of facts, unbiassed by preconceived theories, the fruits of a long and extended experience, and leading to sound practical conclusions. He never sought pecuniary advantage by his publications; and while he spared no expense in the execution of such engravings as were best calculated to afford instruction, he invariably published them at a low price.

His publications relate chiefly to the following subjects, namely: the anatomy and treatment of the various kinds of hernia; of aneurism; of spina bifida; of dislocations and fractures; of exostoses; of encysted tumours, the extraction of calculi from the bladder; the structure and diseases of the breast and of the testis. Among the last subjects to which he had particularly turned his attention was the structure and functions of the thymus gland.

The splendid anatomical and pathological museum which he had collected and created entirely by his own industry and labour, and chiefly within the last few years of his life, at a period when the ardour of most men for scientific pursuits begins to flag, consists of nearly three thousand preparations, each most exquisitely worked out, and the whole admirably arranged. The injected preparations are of unrivalled beauty, and show that he had acquired a facility and perfection in the art of anatomical injection quite peculiar to himself.

He was latterly engaged in an experimental investigation on the functions of the different parts of the brains of the lower animals. His health had suddenly declined a short time before his death, which happened on the 12th of February, 1841.

Sir Astley was left a widower in June, 1827; the year following he married the daughter of John Jones, Esq., of Derry Ormond, in Cardiganshire. He has left no children, and has bequeathed by his will the whole of his musuem to his nephew, Mr. Bransby Cooper, and he has also left some property in the funds (namely, £4,000 three per cent. consols), of which the interest is to be given as a triennial prize for the best original essay or treatise on given subjects in anatomy, physiology, or surgery, to be awarded by the physicians and surgeons of Guy's Hospital.*

AUGUSTINE PYRAMUS DE CANDOLLE, one of the most distinguished botanists of the present age, was born at Geneva on the 4th of February, 1778. The same year is also memorable by the death of Linnæus, the father of modern botany, which took place about

The greater part of this memoir of Sir Astley Cooper, and especially the account of his early life, has been extracted from Pettigrew's "Medical Portrait Gallery."