Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu/231

 he gave a geometrical measurement of an aurora, one of the first attempted, which made its height less than a mile, and showed its dependency upon the altitude of the clouds. In the volume for 1842 he described an aurora which was situated between himself and lofty ‘stratus’ clouds. He wrote an elaborate paper on the formation of ice at the bottom of running water in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1836. Farquharson explained this phenomenon, already discussed by Arago and others, by the radiation of heat from the bottom of the stream cooling its bed, under certain conditions, more quickly than the water which is flowing over it. To the Royal Society Farquharson also communicated the results of the registers of temperature which he kept for a long period of years. This led him to investigate the origin and progress of currents of colder and warmer air moving over the face of a flat country surrounded by hills, and their effects upon vegetation. One of his papers on this head is that ‘On the Nature and Localities of Hoar Frost,’ which was published in the ‘Transactions’ of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland for 1840. These disquisitions recommended their author to the notice of many of the foremost philosophers of the day. On 28 Jan. 1830 he was elected F.R.S. The university of King's College, Aberdeen, conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. on 25 Feb. 1837. The following year he became an honorary member of the Société Française de Statistique Universelle. Among his correspondents were Davies Gilbert, P.R.S., Sir Edward Sabine, Sir William Hooker, Sir David Brewster, and many others. Farquharson also furnished the account of the parish of Alford for the ‘New Statistical Account of Scotland’ (xii. 485–524). He died on 3 Dec. 1843. By his marriage, on 19 Oct. 1826, to Helen, daughter of Alexander Taylor, he had a family of five sons and a daughter.

[Hew Scott's Fasti Eccl. Scot. vol. iii. pt. ii. pp. 547–8; Aberdeen Journal, 13 Dec. 1843; Gent. Mag. new ser. xxi. 94–5.] 

FARQUHARSON, JOHN (1699–1782), jesuit, born in the valley of Braemar, Aberdeenshire, on 19 April 1699, entered the Society of Jesus at Tournay. He completed his theology at the Scotch College, Douay, in 1729, and in October that year landed at Edinburgh to serve the mission. He was stationed at Strathglass, Inverness-shire, where he acquired a thorough knowledge of the Gaelic language. On 2 Feb. 1735–6 he made profession of the four vows. About 1745 he was taken prisoner while celebrating mass, and conveyed to Edinburgh in his sacerdotal vestments. After enduring many sufferings he was restored to liberty. Subsequently to the suppression of his order he lived principally in the valley of Braemar, where he died on 13 Oct. 1782.

He formed an immense collection of Gaelic poetry. The original folio manuscript in his own handwriting he deposited in 1772 in the Scotch College at Douay. Instead, however, of its being carefully preserved, it was suffered to be thrown aside and to perish. The whole of the poems of Ossian were in this collection, and other compositions not known to Macpherson, or, at least, not published by him.

[Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 20; London and Dublin Weekly Orthodox Journal, ii. 285; Foley's Records of English Province of the Society of Jesus, vii. 245; Gordon's Catholic Mission in Scotland, pp. 221, 545.] 

FARR, SAMUEL, M.D. (1741–1795), physician, was born at Taunton, Somersetshire, in 1741. His parents were protestant dissenters. He was educated first at the Warrington Academy, then at Edinburgh, and finally at Leyden University, where he took the degree of M.D. (1765). He was a physician to the Bristol Infirmary from 1767 to 1780, and practised for some years in Bristol. Afterwards returning to his native town he acquired an extensive practice there. He was a diligent writer, and published several medical works that were highly esteemed in their day. He died at Upcott, near Taunton, in the house of Mr. John Fisher, on 11 March 1795.

His published works are: 1. ‘An Essay on the Medical Virtues of Acids,’ London, 1769, 12mo. 2. ‘A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Extent of Animal Motion, deduced from the principles of reason and analogy,’ London, 1771, 8vo. 3. ‘Aphorismi de Marasmo ex summis Medicis collecti,’ 1772, 12mo. 4. ‘Inquiry into the Propriety of Blood-letting in Consumption,’ 1775, 8vo; against the practice. 5. ‘The History of Epidemics, by Hippocrates, in seven books; translated into English from the Greek, with Notes and Observations,’ &c. 6. ‘A Preliminary Discourse on the Nature and Cure of Infection,’ London, 1781, 4to. 7. ‘Elements of Medical Jurisprudence,’ London, 1788, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1811, 12mo; a translation from the work of Fascelius, but with considerable additions by the translator. 8. ‘On the Use of Cantharides in Dropsical Complaints’ (Memoirs Med. ii. 132, 1789).

[Munk's Coll. of Phys.; Toulmin's Hist. of Taunton; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; List of Leyden Students; Gent. Mag. 1795, i. 356.] 