Read The Age of Wonder Online

Authors: Richard Holmes

Tags: #History, #Modern, #19th Century, #Biography & Autobiography, #Science & Technology, #Science, #Philosophy & Social Aspects, #Fiction

The Age of Wonder (92 page)

BOOK: The Age of Wonder
9.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

12
Ibid., p200

13
Hamilton, p229

14
J.S. Mill,
Autobiography,
1870, p124

15
John Herschel,
A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,
1831, p4

16
Ruskin, pp117-21

17
Natural Philosophy,
1830, Part II

18
Ibid., p191

19
Ibid., p4

20
Ibid., p20

21
Ibid., pp14-15

22
Ibid., p55-6

23
Ibid., pp299-303

24
Ibid., pp329-40

25
Ibid., p340

26
Faraday to John Herschel, 10 November 1832,
Correspondence,
vol 1, p623

27
Charles Darwin to W.D. Fox, 15 February 1831, in
Correspondence Volume I, 1821-1836,
CUP, edited by Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith, 1985, p118 footnote 2. See also Charles Darwin,
Autobiography

28
Gentlemen of Science: Early Correspondence,
Camden Society, 1984, p26

29
Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray,
Gentlemen of Science: Early Years,
OUP, 1981, pp12-17

30
Gentlemen of Science: Early Correspondence,
pp85-6

31
Ibid., pp55-8

32
Morrell and Thackray, pp180-201

33
The Times,
23 June 1832, p4, columns 3-4

34
The Voyage of the Beagle,
June 1833

35
Coleridge, 29 June 1833;
Table Talk,
edited by Carl Woodring, 1990, vol 1, p392 and footnote

36
Ibid., pp394-5

37
Coleridge,
Biographia Literaria,
1817, Chapter 4

38
Holmes,
Coleridge: Darker Reflections,
p555

39
Quarterly Review,
51, 1834, pp54-68. James Secord,
Victorian Sensation,
University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp404-5; see also Richard Yeo, ‘William Whewell’, in
Cambridge Scientific Minds,
2000

40
Hamilton, p261

41
Unpublished comment by Mrs Margaret Herschel, in the holograph Introduction to the manuscript of Caroline Herschel’s
Memoirs,
in WH Archive, John Herschel-Shorland. It is interesting that this comment was suppressed from the printed Introduction by her publisher John Murray

42
James Secord,
Vestiges of Natural Creation,
Chicago UP, 2000, p47

43
‘Fragment of Bridgwater Treatise’, Charles Babbage,
Collected Works,
vol 11

44
William Sotheby’s poem is reprinted in Tim Fulford (editor),
Romanticism and Science, 1773-1833

45
The Times,
4 September 1835, p3

46
Gentlemen of Science,
p543

47
Bentley’s Miscellany,
IV, 1838, p209

48
The whole series of experiments is dramatically described in James Hamilton,
Faraday,
2002, pp245-52, which beautifully explains the construction of early coils and dynamos

49
On the Chemical History of a Candle,
1861;
Faber Book of Science,
edited by John Carey, 2003, p90

50
Darwin,
Correspondence
1, p324

51
Knight,
Humphry Davy,
pp176-7

52
Brewster,
Life of Newton,
1831, Chapter XI, pp 148-50; and contrast 1860 edition

53
Ibid., Chapter III, pp35-7, and Chapter XI, p336

54
Ibid., Chapter XIX, p388

55
John Milton,
Paradise Lost,
Book 10, lines 743-5

56
‘Author’s Introduction to the 1831 Standard Edition’,
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus,
1831, px. Introduction dated 15 October 1831

57
Mary Somerville,
The Connexion of the Physical Sciences,
1834, p4

58
Ibid., p260

59
Ibid., ‘Section 24’

60
Ibid., p432

61
Ibid., p2

62
Ibid., p432

63
Ibid., pp260-1

64
Gentlemen of Science: Early Correspondence,
Camden Society, 1984, p137

65
‘Report on the British Association for the Promotion of Science’, in
The Gentleman’s Magazine,
October 1834

66
Janet Browne,
Charles Darwin: Volume 1: Voyaging,
Pimlico, 2003, p137

67
John Herschel,
Natural Philosophy,
pp350-3; and Adrian Desmond and James Moore,
Darwin,
Penguin, 1992, p91

68
Browne, vol 1, p135

69
Letter to John Lubbock FRS, 13 May 1833, quoted in Steven Ruskin,
John Herschel’s Cape Voyage,
p51

70
Ibid., p47

71
WH Archive: John Herschel’s notebooks, drawings and equipment are still preserved by John Herschel-Shorland, Norfolk

72
WH Chronicle, p177

73
Darwin,
Correspondence
1, p498

74
Ibid., p500

75
Charles Lyell to Darwin, 26 December 1836, ibid., p532

76
Caroline Herschel, letter to John Herschel, British Library Ms Egerton 3761-2; also Claire Brock,
The Comet Sweeper: Caroline Herschel’s Astronomical Ambition,
Icon Books, Cambridge, 2007, p205

77
The Times,
Friday, 27 June 1834, quoted in Evans,
Herschel at the Cape,
p88

78
New York Sun,
25-30 August 1835, internet file

79
Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Great Balloon Hoax’, 1836

80
Ruskin,
Herschel’s Cape Voyage,
p97

81
Evans, pp236-7

82
Ibid., pxix

Acknowledgements

For the use of copyright materials and illustrations, and kind permission to consult and refer to manuscripts, rare editions and archives, my most grateful acknowledgements are due to the British Library, London; the University Library, Cambridge; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Royal Institution, London; the Royal Society, London; the Royal Astronomical Society, London; the Science Museum, London; the London Library; the Whipple Museum, Cambridge; the Herschel Museum, Bath; the National Mining Museum, Wakefield; Somerset County Record Office, Bristol; the Cornwall County Record Office, Truro; la Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace, Le Bourget, Aeroport de Paris; the University of New South Wales, Australia, for permission to quote from their transcript of the manuscript of Joseph Banks’s
Endeavour Journal;
to Pickering & Chatto (publishers) Ltd for permission to quote from
The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765-1820,
edited by Neil Chambers; to the Imperial College Press, Natural History Museum and Royal Society, Banks Archive Project, for
The Selected Letters of Sir Joseph Banks, 1768-1820,
edited by Neil Chambers; to Cambridge Science History Publications Ltd, 16 Rutherford Road, Cambridge CB2 8HH, for permission to quote from
Caroline Herschel’s Autobiographies,
edited by Michael Hoskin; to the Royal Astronomical Society for permission to quote from the manuscripts of William and Caroline Herschel; and to John Herschel-Shorland, Harleston, Norfolk, for permission to quote from Herschel manuscripts and for all his kindness in letting me see and refer to Herschel family artefacts in his possession.

In attempting to cross between several scientific disciplines and fields of specialist study, I owe a particular debt to the following scholars and writers whose work has inspired and encouraged me, and whose publications (detailed in my Bibliography) I wholeheartedly recommend to the reader. For Joseph Banks and Pacific exploration: Neil Chambers, Patrick O’Brian and John Gascoigne. For the Herschels and astronomy: Michael Hoskin and Simon Schaffer. For Humphry Davy and chemistry: David Knight, Anne Treneer and Frank A.J.L. James. For Mungo Park and African exploration: Anthony Sattin and Kira Salak. For Victor Frankenstein, Regency medicine and the Vitality debate: Roy Porter and Sharon Ruston. For general overviews of the field of Romantic science and the emerging role of the scientist in society: Tim Fulford, Lisa Jardine and Jenny Uglow. I am also hugely grateful to Professor Amartya Sen, then Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Fellows of Trinity, for giving me two wonderful summers as Visiting Fellow Commoner (2000, 2002), and enabling me (among much else) to spend long evenings talking with mathematicians, chemists, astronomers and astrophysicists-several of them Nobel Prize-winners-which gave me some sense of what science is really about.

My warmest personal thanks are due to my old friend and colleague Professor Jon Cook, to whom this book is dedicated; to Professor Kathryn Hughes and Dr Druin Burch (my medical postgraduate) at the University of East Anglia; William St Clair, Richard Serjeantson and Priya Natarajan (our beautiful astrophysicist) at Trinity College, Cambridge; Professor Christoph Bode at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich; Roderick Winstrop at the Cambridge Observatory; Jim Saulter (pharmacist) and John Allen at Penzance; Debbie James, Curator at the Herschel Museum, Bath; Lenore Symons, the Archivist at the Royal Institution, London; Celia Joicey and Pallavi Vadhia at the National Portrait Gallery; Pierre Lombarde, Directeur, Centre de Documentation, Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace, Le Bourget; Dr Paul Baronek, then of GlaxoSmithKline, for his advice on drugs and medical procedures; Alan Judd for late-night intelligence at The Reform; Patricia Duncker for discussing the fact and fiction of telescopes; Tim Dee of the BBC for producing our three drama-documentaries,
The Frankenstein Experiment
(Radio 3, 2002),
A Cloud in a Paper Bag
(Radio 3, 2007) and
Anaesthesia
(Radio 4, 2009); my brother Adrian Holmes of Young & Rubicam, and my sister Tessa Holmes of the London College of Printing, for their shrewd help with questions of presentation and design; my late uncle, Squadron Leader David Gordon (RAF Bomber Command), who taught me to build short-wave radios, to understand the principles of flight, and once smuggled me into the cockpit of his Vulcan V bomber (not armed); the West Kent Gliding Club and the Norfolk Hot Air Balloon Co. for some highly instructive airborne moments; Eleanor Tremain for finding Andromeda; Dr Percy Harrison, Head of Science, Eton College, for patiently trying to save me from at least some of my scientific howlers; Mr Glasgow, Department of Orthopaedics, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, for discussing anaesthetics in the few seconds before he put me under; Richard Fortey, FRS, for swift, exacting and helpful observations at proof stage; and finally Sir Michael Holroyd, for simply being such an inspiration to an entire generation of biographers (Romantic or otherwise).

I have been very lucky at HarperCollins to have such a truly outstanding team behind this book: Robert Lacey (words), Sophie Goulden (pictures), Louise McLeman (internal design), Julian Humphries (cover design), Helen Ellis (trajectories), Douglas Matthews (the prince of indexers), and above all my dauntless, visionary editor Arabella Pike, who would have done brilliantly aboard the
Endeavour
(although that was a much shorter voyage than this one). Best thanks also to my agent David Godwin, who backed this starry-eyed project from its start. Two other teams have supported me far more than they can ever know: the ever-loving Dominos, and of course those wild Delancey boys. To Rose Tremain, once again:
without you no book.

R.H.

Index

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

Abbott, Benjamin, 352, 354, 357-8

Abernethy, John, 306-13, 317-18, 320, 322, 336, 403n

Aboukir Bay, battle of (1799), 156

Académie des Sciences: and discovery of Uranus, 101; supports development of balloons, 125-6, 128, 133, 149; welcomes first balloon crossing of Channel, 152; awards Prix Napoléon to Davy, 299; investigates ‘animal magnetism’, 314; Davy and Gay-Lussac analyse new element for, 353-4

Accra, 229

Ackroyd, Peter, 308

Adam, Dr A.K.: ‘The Long Delay: Davy to Morton’, 284n

Adams, John, 166-7

Adventure,
HMS, 49

Africa: exploration, 212, 214

Africa Association
(earlier
Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Inland Districts of Africa), 212, 214, 229

Aguirre, the Wrath of God
(film), 228n

air: study of, 245-7, 257; Beddoes uses in medical treatment, 251

Akesian Society, 287

Albertus Magnus, 248

Aldini, Giovanni, 317, 320, 327-8

Ali (Ludmar Moorish chief), 216

Alströmer, Johann, 49, 56

alternative medicine, 315n

Amadi (Arabic guide), 224, 228-9

American Civil War: balloons in, 156

Amiens, Peace of (1802), 200

Ampère, André, 347, 353, 401

anaesthesia, 262, 282-4, 305

Analytical Society (Cambridge), 387

Anderson, Dr Alexander, 213, 222-5; death, 225-6

Anderson, Thomas, 213

Angier, Natalie:
The Canon: The Beautiful Basics of Science,
172n

animal magnetism, 125, 314, 316

Annual Anthology
(ed. Southey), 259, 266, 269, 275

anthropology: and craniology, 310-11

Anti-Jacobin
(magazine), 273

Apocalypse Now
(film), 228n

Apollo astronauts, 161

Apreece, Jane
see
Davy, Jane, Lady

Apreece, Shuckburgh Ashby, 338

Arago, François, 464

Arblay, Alexandre d’ (Fanny Burney’s son), 305

Arblay, General Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Piochard d’ (Fanny Burney’s husband), 305

Arblay, Mme d’
see
Burney, Fanny

Archimedes, xvii, 428

Argand, Aimé, 133

Argument by Design, 219, 336, 450

Aristotle, 171

Arlandes, François Laurent, Marquis d’, 129-31

‘armchair traveller’, 51

Arnold, John, 47

asteroids: named by Herschel, 210

Astronomical Society
see
Royal Astronomical Society

astronomy: constellations named, 79; measurement of distances, 90-2; French dominance in, 101-2; increased popular interest in, 105-6, 111; effect of night observation on participants, 118-19n; philosophical significance, 203, 206; poetic interest in, 206-7; Davy on, 288, 355, 426; and religious belief, 451

atheism, 198, 313, 449

Athenaeum
(journal), 464

Athenaeum club, London, 405

Aubert, Alexander, 101, 108-9, 118, 171-4, 189, 196

Augusta, Princess, 111, 177

Aurora Borealis, 447

Aussee, Styria, 377

Austen, Jane, 342

Australia: and Cook’s explorations, 10, 38 & n; Banks encourages exploration and settlement, 211-12, 386

Baader, Franz von, 329

Babbage, Charles: and John Herschel, 387, 389-90; view of Royal Society, 394, 439-40; supports Wollaston for presidency of Royal Society, 397-8; devises difference engines (calculating machines), 399, 437-8; and Davy’s speech on award of Copley Medal to John Herschel, 400; supports Faraday’s election to Royal Society Fellowship, 402; Continental tour with John Herschel, 405-6; co-founds Royal Astronomical Society, 407; attends Caroline’s farewell reception, 409; not appointed Secretary at Royal Society by Davy, 413; refers to Davy’s
Consolations in Travel,
430, 455; and Royal Society presidential election (1829), 436-7; status and influence, 437; and proposed union of scientific societies, 440, 446; attends British Association meetings, 447; religious scepticism, 452; favours admitting women to membership of British Association, 459-60; Charles Darwin studies, 461; ‘Lectures on Astronomy’, 206;
Reflections on the Decline of Science in England,
437-8

Babington, Dr Thomas, 299, 402, 414, 417

Bacon, Francis, 249, 371, 428-9;
Novum Organum,
442

Baillie, Joanna, 348

Baker, Henry, 295

Bakerian Lectures
see
Royal Society

Baldwin family (of Slough), 165

Baldwin, Mrs (Mary Herschel’s mother), 183

balloons: development in France, 125-6, 128-33, 146; hydrogen (Charlier), 131, 144, 159; interest and flights in England, 133-4, 136-45, 155-8; navigation and steering, 133, 146, 156, 159; Samuel Johnson on, 134-5; military uses, 135-6, 155-6; accidents and fatalities, 143, 145, 153-5, 158; and scientific enquiry, 147-8; first Channel crossing, 148-51; as invasion threat, 155; high-altitude ascents, 159; scientific effects, 159; and understanding of meteorology, 159-60; and mapping, 160-1; imaginative effects, 161-2; popular interest in, 161

Banks, Dorothea, Lady
(née
Hugessen), 54-5, 213, 381

Banks, Sir Joseph: as scientific guide, xxi; qualities, 1-2, 6, 15; in Tahiti, 1-7, 14-15, 19-21; on thieving in Tahiti, 4-6, 16-17; recovers stolen quadrant, 5-6; background and studies, 7-9; collection, 9, 47-8; journals, 9, 12, 14-15, 20, 44, 58-9, 249n; joins
Endeavour
expedition, 10-13; disbelieves in existence of southern continent, 11; and Harriet Blosset, 11-12, 41-2; survives snowstorm on Tierra del Fuego, 13-14; learns Tahitian language, 19; sexual experiences in Tahiti, 19, 22, 25-6, 30, 42; anthropological and human interests in Tahiti, 20-6, 36; clothes and belongings stolen, 24; circumnavigation and exploration of Tahiti, 29-33; quarrel with Monkhouse, 29; witnesses tattooing of young woman, 32-3; proposes keeping Tahitian as collector’s curiosity, 34; leaves Tahiti, 35; in Australia and New Zealand, 38n; reflections on indigenous people, 39; death of greyhound bitch Lady, 40; return to England on
Endeavour,
40-1; celebrity, 42-3; friendship with George III, 43, 49; and Parkinson’s published journal, 44-5; plans publication of journal, 46; rejected by Admiralty for Cook’s second voyage, 46-7; expedition to Hebrides and Iceland, 47, 54, 121n; relations with Sarah Wells, 49, 53-4; welcomed by learned societies, 49; meets Omai on arrival in England, 50-1; in Cowper’s
The Task,
51-2; in Parry portrait with Omai and Solander, 51; behaviour after return to England, 52-3; elected President of Royal Society, 54-5; marriage to Dorothea Hugessen, 54-5, 213; scientific salon and breakfasts in Soho Square, 54, 57, 381, 395, 465n; later life and career, 56-8; and Solander’s death, 56, 396; suffers from gout, 56-7, 211, 381, 394; correspondence, 57n; interest in Herschel, 60, 62; writes to Herschel on Pole Star, 87; and Herschel’s discovery of Uranus, 98-101, 103, 125; entertains Herschel, 101; presents Copley Medal to Herschel, 105; supports Herschel against detractors, 109; tests Herschel’s telescope, 109; introduces Herschel to George III, 110; hears of French aerial experiments, 125-7, 133-4; and internal dissension at Royal Society, 125; supports British ballooning, 137; disparages Lunardi, 140; Blanchard meets, 147; Jeffries reports to on cross-Channel balloon flight, 152; predicts advances in British astronomy, 163; supports Herschel’s forty-foot telescope project, 164, 176-8; visits Caroline Herschel at Slough, 173; and George III’s reaction to financing Herschel’s telescope project, 180; Caroline Herschel writes to from Greenwich, 194; on Herschel’s discovery of infra-red light, 199; letter from Herschel on asteroids, 210; administrative commitments, 211; encourages travel and colonial settlement, 211-13, 386; and Mungo Park’s African expedition, 211, 216; childlessness, 213; meets and promotes Mungo Park, 213-14, 232; welcomes Park on return from Africa, 221; organises Park’s second African expedition, 222; Park writes to from Sansanding, 226, 231; declines requests from Beddoes and Pneumatic Institute, 235; interest in Humphry Davy, 235-6; on developing chemistry, 247; capacity for observation, 249n; on Brown’s theory of medicines, 256; appreciation of Davy, 272; describes Volta’s experiments, 274; unofficial approaches to Davy, 277; disbelieves therapeutic effects of nitrous oxide, 281; and founding of Royal Institution, 285; attends Davy’s Royal Institution lectures, 286, 289-90; in Gillray cartoon, 292; chairs Davy’s Royal Society Bakerian Lecture, 295; portrait shows transcript of Davy’s Bakerian Lecture, 299; letter from Beddoes (published) on medical profession and public health, 302; in Walker’s composite portrait, 303; promotes medical science, 306-7; scepticism over Vitalism, 315; and Aldini’s experiments, 317; interest in Ritter, 328-30; teases Davy on marriage to Jane, 342-3; social life, 359; and science’s service to British industry, 362; and Davy’s development of miners’ safety lamp, 364-5; defends Davy against Stephenson’s priority claims, 374; final illness and death, 380, 394-6, 435; on climate change, 383; scientific correspondence, 383-4; admires clever women, 384; growing conservatism, 384-6, 394; view of Byron, 384-5; on John Herschel’s paper to Royal Society, 390; maintains pre-eminence of Royal Society, 393-4; supports Babbage’s application for Edinburgh Chair, 394; promotes Parry’s polar expedition, 395-6; re-elected President of Royal Society (1819), 395; and Blagden’s death, 396; Davy’s grudging sketch of, 400; and colonial persecution, 426; achievements and influence, 435; religious indifference, 450; Charles Darwin studies voyages, 461; dreams of astronomical expedition to southern hemisphere, 462;
Endeavour Journal,
4, 21, 46n, 47, 56, 382;
Endeavour Voyage
(unfinished), 58-9; ‘On the Manners and Customs of the South Sea Islands’, 36-8; ‘Thoughts on the Manners of the Otaheite’, 45

Banks, Sophia (Joseph’s sister), 9, 12, 41, 54-5, 59, 134, 137, 384, 395, 450

Banks Island: Parry names for Sir Joseph, 396

Barbauld, Anna, 246 & n, 304

Baretti, Giuseppe, 50

Barrias, Louis Ernest:
Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science
(statues), 436n

Barrington, Shute, Bishop of Durham, 351

Bastille: fall (1789), 176, 191

Bath: Herschel in, 60, 75-7, 80, 95; Caroline sings in, 90

Bath Philosophical Society, 60-1, 91, 93

Beagle
(ship), xvi, 438, 446-7, 455, 461

Beaglehole, John C., 59

Beaufort, Sir Francis, 159, 438

Beaufoy, Henry, 156

Beddoes, Anna
(née
Edgeworth): Davy’s attachment to, 253-4, 260-1, 278, 281, 288, 301, 337; inhales nitrous oxide, 263; Maria Edgeworth on, 264; exchanges poetry with Davy, 275, 278-80; children, 279-80; leaves Beddoes for Giddy, 281; visits Davy at Royal Institution, 291; settles in Italy, 302; nurses dying Beddoes, 308; Davy consults about marriage to Jane Apreece, 339

Beddoes, Anna Maria (Anna’s daughter): birth, 279

Beddoes, Dr Thomas: Davy works with, 235, 252-7; organises Pneumatic Institute, 235, 251, 285, 356-7; radicalism and medical ideas, 235, 250-2, 254-5, 290n; asthma, 253; marriage, 253-4, 280; on nitrous oxide experiments, 263-4; Coleridge on, 268; Davy dedicates
Researches
to, 271; attacked and satirised, 273-4; Davy leaves, 277-8, 285; and Davy’s admission of ineffectiveness of nitrous oxide, 281-2, 285n; abandons experimental work, 286; wife leaves, 286; Davy loses touch with, 293; on Davy’s successes in chemistry, 299; death, 302; biographies, 303n;
Hygia: Essays Moral and Medical,
286; ‘A Letter to Sir Joseph Banks’, 302;
Observations made at the Medical Pneumatic Institution,
272-3

Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, 302-3;
Death’s Jest-Book,
303

Bell, Charles, 452

Bentley’s Miscellany,
453

Bentley’s Standard Novels, 456

Berlin Academy of Sciences, 406, 440

Berlin Astronomical Yearbook,
97n

Berthollet, Claude Louis, Comte de, 128, 345, 353, 396, 403n

Berzelius, Johann Jacob, 296, 299, 439

Bible, Holy: on creation and age of earth, 451, 454, 459

Bichat, Xavier, 306, 310, 312

Biggin, George, 141-2

Blagden, Sir Charles, 63, 134, 171, 173, 317, 381, 386, 395-6

Blake, William: published by Johnson, 106; satirises scientific aspirations 143; Jane Apreece dines with, 338; engraving of Newton, 404n; ‘An Island in the Moon’ (verse-prose fragment), 143

Blanchard, Jean-Pierre, 128, 146-52, 159, 161

Blanchard, Sophie, 159

Bligh, William, 386

Blosset, Harriet
(later
Dessalis), 4, 11-12

Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 221, 310, 330, 425;
Comparative Anatomy,
311;
Manual of Natural History,
266

Bode, Johann, 114;
Uranographia,
97n

Boehme, Jakob, 345

Boethius:
Consolation,
424

Bonaparte, Lucien, 114

Bonnycastle, John:
Introduction to Astronomy in Letters to his Pupil,
105-6, 113, 124, 206

Borlase, John Bingham, 241-2

Borodino, battle of (1812), 306

Boswell, James, 43;
Tour of the Hebrides,
211

Botany Bay, New South Wales: Banks recommends for colonial settlement, 211, 386

Bougainville, Louis-Antoine de, 3, 4n, 11, 46n, 461

Bourgeois, David, 132

Brahe, Tycho, 171

Brett, Elizabeth, 139

Brewster, Sir David, 399, 437, 445, 447, 460;
Life of Sir Isaac Newton,
454-6

Bridgewater, Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of, 451

Bristol: Davy in, 256; Davy leaves for London, 285;
see also
Pneumatic Institute

Bristol Mirror,
284

Britain: balloons and ballooning in, 136-45, 155-8; war with France, 231, 297; state of science in, 435, 437-45

BOOK: The Age of Wonder
9.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

A New Kind of War by Anthony Price
Superviviente by Chuck Palahniuk
Tender Trust by Tanya Stowe
Stormy Haven by Rosalind Brett
50/50 by Dean Karnazes
The Bird’s Nest by Shirley Jackson
The Seer And The Sword by Victoria Hanley
The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi
Lincoln Unbound by Rich Lowry