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WAT , and was educated at Lincoln college, Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship. He was the author of an English translation of Davila's History of the Civil Wars, and of Lord Bacon's De Augmentis Scientiarum. He died in 1657.—F.  WATSON,, a celebrated engraver in mezzotint, was born in London about 1758. The daughter of an engraver, she learned the art from her father, and executed a great many plates, chiefly portraits, with great taste and skill. She engraved several of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds—by whom she was much esteemed as an engraver—among others his own head; some of Gainsborough's portraits; and Woollett and Benjamin West, after Gilbert Stuart. She died in 1810.—J. T—e.  WATSON,, a learned Scotch professor, was born at Brechin about the year 1700. He was educated at St. Leonard's college, St. Andrews, and acquired such a high reputation for ability and learning that he was chosen professor of philosophy. On the union of the two colleges of St. Leonard's and St. Salvator's in 1747, Watson's services were no longer required in that capacity, and he went to London, where he completed his well-known translation of Horace. He had unfortunately fallen into dissipated habits, which reduced him to destitution, and shortened his days. He died in London in 1756, in such abject poverty that he was buried at the expense of the parish. Besides the translation of Horace, Watson was the author of a work entitled "The History of the Heathen Gods and Goddesses."—J. T.  WATSON,, Colonel of engineers, a British military engineer, was born at Holbeach in Lincolnshire in 1737, and died at Dover on the 17th of September, 1780. He was educated at the military academy of Woolwich, and was a pupil of Thomas Simpson, whose posthumous works he edited. He entered the corps of military engineers, in which he soon distinguished himself by his services. He went to Bengal with Lord Clive, became chief engineer to the East India Company, and attained a high reputation by the fortifications and other works which he executed in India. He also translated Euler's work on the construction and manœuvring of ships, and practised naval architecture with great success. He was at length compelled by failing health to return to Britain, and died immediately after his arrival.—W. J. M. R.  * WATSON,, a distinguished British botanist, was born in the parish of Firbeck, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on the 9th May, 1804. He is the son of Holland Watson, Esq., of Park-hill. He prosecuted his medical studies at Edinburgh from 1829 to 1832, but he did not graduate. Possessing a moderate fortune, he devoted his attention specially to science. He attained honours in the botanical class under Professor Robert Graham; and his prize essay on the geographical distribution of British plants, was the foundation of his future published work on that subject. After leaving Edinburgh he settled at Thames Ditton in 1833, and has continued to reside there ever since. He has given occasional lectures on botany to institutions at Manchester, Liverpool, &c. The department of science in which he has acquired eminence, is that which relates to the influence of climate and soil, of local situation and geographical position, upon the vegetable productions of Britain and other countries. His work, entitled "Cybele Britannica," in 3 vols. 8vo, 1847-55, is the only one which treats fully on the subject of the distribution of plants in Britain. It is a model of careful and elaborate research. In 1842 Mr. Watson visited the Azores, and afterwards gave an account of the flora of these islands. He has accumulated a valuable library and an extensive herbarium. He is a fellow of the Linnæan Society, one of the early members of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, and a member of the Silesian Academia Naturæ Curiosorum. Besides his works on the geographical distribution of British plants the following may be noticed—"Botanists' Guide to British Plants;" "London Catalogue of British Plants;" "Statistics of Phrenology;" Phrenological Journal, edited by him, for 1838-40; and numerous papers in Hooker's London Journal of Botany, the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, the Magazine of Natural History, Botanical Magazine, the Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, and the Phytologist.—J. H. B.  WATSON,, the Scottish printer, "for several years," says George Chalmers in his life of Ruddiman, "the great newsmonger of Scotland, as Butter had been of England during the prior age," was born about 1675. His father was a merchant in Aberdeen, who engaged in printing-speculations in Edinburgh, and in payment of a debt due to his father for money lent to Charles II. in exile, was made sole printer of almanacs in Scotland. James Watson started as a printer in 1695, and in February, 1699, issued the Edinburgh Gazette, the first paper established in Scotland after the Revolution, and which before long he transferred to other hands. In February, 1705, he established the Edinburgh Courant which he soon parted with, in the September of the same year issuing the Scots Courant, and that he continued to print "beyond the year 1718." On commencing business he was obstructed by the claims of the representative of a Mr. Anderson, who had obtained a royal patent for printing; but he succeeded in keeping his ground, and afterwards received, in conjunction with a Mr. Fairbairn, a patent in his own favour. In 1713 he published the "History of the Art of Printing," a translation from the French of a work by Jean de la Caille. Prefixed is "a preface by the publisher to the printers in Scotland," containing some curious particulars respecting the condition and recent history of the typographic art in Scotland. The preface is followed by a "Specimen of types in the printing-house of James Watson." This enterprising man died at Edinburgh in September, 1722.—F. E.  WATSON,, an eminent American lawyer, and one of the subscribers of the Declaration of Independence, was the son of a Scottish farmer, and was born about 1742. After studying successively at Glasgow, St. Andrews, and Edinburgh, he emigrated in 1766 to Philadelphia. He was for some time employed as a tutor in a college, but he ultimately studied law, and was called to the bar. He took up his residence in Philadelphia, was elected a member of congress in 1775, and strenuously supported the cause of the colonies against the mother country. He was a member of the committee which framed the constitution of the United States. In 1789 he was appointed by Washington a judge of the supreme court, and he died in 1798. His political and legal disquisitions have been published in 3 vols., and are highly esteemed in America.—J. T.  WATSON,, an English divine and historian, was born at Lyma-cum-Hanley, Prestbury, Cheshire, 26th March, 1724, and was educated at various Lancashire grammar-schools, and at Brazennose college, Oxford. He took holy orders and obtained preferments, the last of which was the rectory of Stockport, Cheshire. He was author of a "History of Halifax," published in 1775; a "History of the ancient Earls of Warren and Surrey;" a letter depreciatory of the Moravian hymn-book, and a few contributions to the Archæologia. He died in 1783.—F. <section end="575H" /> <section begin="575I" />WATSON,, the religious philanthropist, was born in 1771. His father, belonging to an old family of Cumberland "statesmen," was established in London as a wine merchant. At fourteen, Mr. Watson was placed in his father's counting-house, and in 1814 he withdrew from business with a fortune which he was free to devote to the Church of England and some of her objects. Before he retired, they had occupied his leisure. In 1811 he was one of the founders of the National Society for the Education of the Poor, and to the end of his days he was a very active lay promoter of Church of England enterprises. Van Mildert, Christopher Wordsworth, and Hugh James Rose, were among his chief ecclesiastical friends, and few men did more than Joshua Watson for the extension of the colonial episcopate. He was many years treasurer to the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, and he aided energetically to found King's college, London. He died at Clapton, Hackney, in January, 1855, and an elaborate memoir of him by Archdeacon Churton, in 2 vols., was published in 1861.—F. E. <section end="575I" /> <section begin="575Zcontin" />WATSON,, an eminent prelate, was born in August, 1737, at Heversham, near Kendal. He received his first education at a free grammar-school, of which his father, a clergyman, had been master; and in 1754 he entered Trinity college, Cambridge. In 1757 he obtained a scholarship, and in 1760 a fellowship. He was second wrangler when he took his degree of B.A. In 1764 he was elected professor of chemistry—a science of which, at his election, he knew nothing—but by diligent application he gathered as much knowledge as enabled him to deliver a creditable course of lectures. In 1768 he published "Institutiones Metallurgicæ," and the year following, he was chosen a member of the Royal Society. In 1771 he was elected regius professor of divinity on the death of Dr. Rutherforth, and at his election he did not know much more of theology than he had done of chemistry, when promoted to teach it. He had not even taken the usual theological degrees. In 1773 he retired to a rectory in North Wales, where there was no clerical <section end="575Zcontin" />