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224
Hereditary Genius
fine womanly presence, orderly, and ladylike. An old woman described her
from recollection, as “a braw braw woman, none now to be seen like her.”
[u.] John Muirhead seems to have been of kindred disposition to Watt's father; the
two were closely united in many adventures.
[R] Died at sea, aet. 21. (See above, the allusion to the two grandsons.)
S. Gregory died aet. 27. Was of great promise as a man of science, and intimately
attached to Sir Humphry Davy. Is well known to geologists by his experiment
of fusing stones and making artificial basalt.
[S.] James died unmarried, aet. 79. Had great natural abilities, but he was a recluse,
and somewhat peculiar in his habits.
Wollaston, William Hyde, M.D.; a very ingenious natural philosopher and
experimentalist, known chiefly by his invention of the goniometer, which gave
an accurate basis to the science of crystallography, and by that of the camera
lucida. Also by his discovery of the metal palladium.
“A peculiar taste for
intellectual pursuits of the more exact kind appears to have been hereditary in
the family.”
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