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DUMAS —DU

MAURI ER

didacticism apart, lie had great gifts. He knew his —a derivative of essentially the same character as thebusiness thoroughly, possessed the art of situation, interest, acetic acid itself. In the 1826 paper he described his crisis—could create characters that were real and alive. famous method for ascertaining vapour densities, and the His dialogue also is admirable, the repartee rapier-like, the redeterminations which he undertook by its aid of the wit most keen. He was singularly happy, too, in his atomic weights of carbon and oxygen proved the forerunners dramatic interpreters. The cast of UEtrangere, for in- of a long series which included some thirty of the elements, stance, comprised Sarah Bernhardt, Croizette, Madeleine the results being mostly published in 1858-60. He alsoBrohan, in the female characters; and Coquelin, Got, devised a method of great value in the quantitative analysis Mounet-Sully, and Febvre in the male characters; and of organic substances for the estimation of nitrogen, whileDesclee, whom he discovered, gave her genius to the the classification of organic compounds into homologous creation of the parts of the heroine in Une Visite de Noces, series was advanced as one consequence of his researches the Princesse Georges, and La Femme de Claude. His into the acids generated by the oxidation of the alcohols. wit has been mentioned. He possessed it in abundance, Dumas was a prolific writer, and his numerous books, of a singularly trenchant kind. It shows itself less in essays, memorial addresses, &c., show him to have been his novels, which, however, do not contain his best work; gifted with a clear and graceful style. His earliest large but in his introductions, whether to his own books work was a treatise on applied chemistry in eight volumes, or those of his friends, and what may be called his the first of which was published in 1828 and the last twenty “occasional” writings, there is an admirable brightness. years afterwards. In the Fssai de Statique Chimique des At work of this kind he showed the highest literary skill. iltres Organises, written jointly with Boussingault (1841), His style is that of the best French traditions. Towards he treated the chemistry of life, both plant and animal; his father Dumas acted a kind of brother’s part, and this book brought him into conflict with Liebig, who conwhile keeping strangely free from his literary influence, ceived that some of his prior work had been appropriated both loved and admired him. The father never belonged without due acknowledgment. In 1824, in conjunction to the French Academy. The son was elected into that with his friends Audouin and Adolphe Brongniart, heaugust assembly on the 30th January 1874. He died on founded the Annales des Sciences Naturelles, and from 1840 he was one of the editors of the Annales de Chimic the 27th November 1895. (f. t. m.) et de Physique. As a teacher Dumas was much sought Dumas, Jean Baptiste Andr4 (1800- after for his lectures at the Sorbonne and other institu1884), French chemist, was born at Alais (Gard) on 14th tions both on pure and applied science; and he was one July 1800. Disappointed in his early hope of entering the of the first men in France to realize the importance of (h. m. e.) navy, he became apprentice to an apothecary in his native experimental laboratory teaching. town; but seeing little prospect of advancement in that Du Maurier, George Louis Palmella calling, he soon moved to Geneva (in 1816). There he attended the lectures of such men as Pictet in physics, De Busson (1834-1896), British artist and writer, was la Bive in chemistry, and De Candolle in botany, and born in Paris. His father, a naturalized British subject, before he had reached his majority he was engaged with was the son of emigres who had left France during the Prevost in original work on problems of physiological Reign of Terror and settled in London. In Peter R>betchemistry, and even of embryology. In 1823, acting on son, the first of the three books which won George du the advice of Humboldt, he left Geneva for Paris, which Maurier late in life a reputation as novelist almost as great he made his home for the rest of his life. There he as he had enjoyed as artist and humorist for more than a. gained the acquaintance of many of the foremost scientific generation, the author tells in the form of fiction the story men of the day, and quickly made a name for himself both of his singularly happy childhood. He was brought to as a teacher and an investigator, attaining within ten years London, indeed, when three or four years old, and spent the honour of membership of the Academy of Sciences. in Devonshire Terrace and elsewhere two colourless years; When approaching his fiftieth year he entered political life, but vague memories of this period were suddenly exchanged and became a member of the National Legislative Assembly. one beautiful day in June—“ the first day of his conscious He acted as Minister of Agriculture and Commerce for a existence ”—for the charming realities of a French garden few months in 1850-51, and subsequently became a Sena- and “an old yellow house with green shutters and mansard tor, President of the Municipal Council of Paris, and roofs of slate.” Here, at Passy, with his “ gay and jovial Master of the French Mint; but his official career came to father” and his young English mother, the boy spent a sudden end with the fall of the Second Empire. He died “ seven years of sweet priceless home-life—seven times four at Cannes on 11th April 1884. Dumas is one of the most changing seasons of simple genial prae-Imperial Frenchprominent figures in the chemical history of the middle ness.” The second chapter of Du Maurier’s life had for part of the 19th century. He was one of the first to scene a Paris school, very much in the style of that criticize the electro-chemical doctrines of Berzelius, which “ Institution F. Brossard ” which he describes, at once so at the time his work began were widely accepted as the vividly and so sympathetically, in The Martian ; and like true theory of the constitution of compound bodies, and “Barty Josselin’s” schoolfellow and biographer, he left opposed a unitary view to the dualistic conception of the it (in 1851) to study chemistry at University College, Swedish chemist. In a paper on the atomic theory, pub- London, actually setting up as an analytical chemist afterlished so early as 1826, he anticipated to a remarkable wards in Bucklersbury. But this was clearly not to be extent some ideas which are frequently supposed to belong his metier, and the year 1856 found him once more in to a later period; and the continuation of these studies led Paris, in the Quartier Latin this time, in the core of that him to the ideas about substitution (“ metalepsy ”) which art-world of which in Trilby, forty years later, he was were developed about 1839 into the theory (“ Older Type to produce with pen and pencil so idealistic and fascinatTheory ”) that in organic chemistry there are certain types ing a picture. Then, like “ Barty Josselin ” himself, he which remain unchanged even when their hydrogen is re- spent some years in Belgium and the Netherlands, explaced by an equivalent of a haloid element. Many of periencing at Antwerp in 1857, when he was working in his well-known researches were carried out in support of the studio of Van Lerius, the one great misfortune of his these views, one of the most important being that on the life—the gradual loss of sight in his left eye, accompanied action of chlorine on acetic acid to form trichloracetic acid by alarming symptoms in his right. It was a period cl