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 Arnold with, his mechanical powers, he was enabled to set up in business in Devereux Court, Strand, whence he afterwards removed to the Adelphi. He was introduced at court, and received assistance from King George III towards the cost of his experiment. Afterwards he presented the king with a very curious and very small watch, set in a ring. A full account of this ingenious toy is given in Wood's 'Curiosities of Clocks and Watches,' p. 327. The chronometer of Harrison had not long before Arnold's establishment in London been perfected, and had received the reward offered by parliament for a method of ascertaining the longitude at sea; Arnold took up the manufacture of chronometers (first so named by him), and, besides introducing certain improvements in them, he so systematised the arrangements for their production that he was able to reduce very considerably their originally high price. He made chronometers not only for the government, but also for the East India Company, then a still better customer than the government. Without going into technicalities, it would be impossible to describe Arnold's improvements in the chronometer; they are, however, set out very fully in the article on the chronometer in Rees's 'Encyclopaedia.' The chief improvements with which he is credited are the expansion balance, the detached escapement, and the cylindrical balance spring. All these, however, have been claimed for Earnshaw, and how much of the credit is due to each of the two rivals cannot be said. After Arnold's death the Board of Longitude, which had granted various sums to him during his life, awarded to his son, J. R. Arnold, and to Earnshaw amounts which, with the former grants, made up 3,000l. apiece to each inventor.

[There is a very full account of Arnold in the Biographical Dictionary commenced by the Useful Knowledge Society; a short account of him, with a full list of authorities, is given in Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, iii. 1034; for his improvements in the chronometer see Rees's Cyclopædia, s.v.; Frodsham on the Marine Chronometer; also Arnold's own Works and his two Patent Specifications (No. 1113. A.D. 1775, and No. 1328, A.D. 1782).]  ARNOLD, JOSEPH, M.D. (1782–1818), naturalist, was born 28 Dec. 1782 at Beccles, was apprenticed to a local surgeon named Crowfoot, and graduated M.D. Edin. 1807. In his youth he had directed much attention to botany, and made some communications to the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' He entered the British navy as surgeon in 1808, and, the navy being reduced after the war, in January 1815 we find him in medical charge of the Northampton, bound with female convicts to Botany Bay. Returning by way of Batavia in the Indefatigable, of Boston, the ship was burnt by carelessness on 22 Oct. 1815, destroying many of his journals, and his collection of insects from South America, New Holland, and the Straits of Sunda. After some excursions in Java with Sir Stamford Raffles, of which interesting accounts are preserved in the memoir by Mr. Dawson Turner, he returned home in 1816, but, longing for further opportunities of research in travel, he obtained employment as naturalist with Sir Stamford Raffles when he was appointed governor of Sumatra. He prepared himself for research on an extensive scale by study in London. Arriving at Bencoolen 22 March 1818, his second excursion to Passumah produced the discovery of the remarkable plant without stem or leaves named, after the governor and himself, Rafflesia Arnoldi, which is parasitic upon a species of wild vine, and has a huge flower three feet in diameter, and weighing 15lbs. This was described by Robert Brown in Trans. Linn. Soc. xiii. He made a rich collection of shells and fossils, but was cut off by fever at Padang. Sumatra, on one of the last days of July 1818. Sir T. S. Raffles, in recording his death, says: 'It is impossible I can do justice to his memory by any feeble encomiums I may pass upon his character. He was in every respect what he should have been; devoted to science and the acquisition of knowledge, and aiming only at usefulness.' He was elected F.L.S. 1815, and bequeathed his collection of shells and fossils to the Linnean Society.

[Memoir by Dawson Turner, Ipswich, 1849; Memoir of Sir T. S. Raffles, London, 1830; Trans. Linn. Soc. xiii. 201.]  ARNOLD, RICHARD (d. 1521?), antiquary and chronicler, was a citizen of London, dwelling in the parish of St. Magnus, London Bridge. It would appear from his own book that he was a merchant trading with Flanders. He was an executor of the will of John Amell the elder, citizen and cutler of London, which was drawn up in 1473, and he is there described as a haberdasher. He was in the habit, for purposes of business, of paying visits to Flanders, and was in 1488 confined in the castle of Sluys on suspicion of being a spy. He was apparently hard pressed by creditors at one period of his life, and sought shelter in the sanctuary at Westminster. He had a wife named Alice and a son Nicholas. The date of his death is uncertain. Douce, who fully investigated the matter, concluded that he