[6] Vasari, in Vite de’ Pittori, vol. iv. p. 264, ascribes the invention of engraving on copper to a goldsmith of Florence, named Maso Finiguerra, about 1460. The oldest engravers whose names and marks are known, were Israel de Mecheln, of Bokholt, in the bishopric of Munster; Martin Schœn, who worked at Colmar in Alsace, where he died in 1486; and Michael Wolgemuth of Nuremberg, who was preceptor to the famous Albert Durer, and engraved the plates in the well-known Nuremberg Chronicle. It may be proper here to observe, that the art of engraving on wood seems to be older than the invention of printing, to which perhaps it gave rise. The names of the first engravers on wood are however not known. [In the Athenæum Journal for 1845, page 965, is given a fac-simile of a large wood-engraving, bearing the date of 1418, which was discovered at Malines in 1844, and is now preserved in the public library at Brussels.] MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. John Beckmann, Professor of Œconomy at Göttingen during a period of forty-five years, was born at Hoye, a small town in the kingdom of Hanover, in 1739. His father held the appointment of postmaster and receiver of taxes in that place, and at the same time cultivated a small farm, which appears to have inspired his son with a taste for agricultural pursuits. The superintendence of his education devolved principally on his mother, a woman of great prudence and strength of mind, who was left a widow when young Beckmann was scarcely seven years old. In a lonely house, amid examples of industry and daily labour, he passed his youth in the perusal of works, which, although of a common-place description, were not without their use, as they led him to contract a methodical habit of mind, and afforded considerable information on various subjects, which in the sequel greatly assisted him in the pursuits to which he owed his celebrity. He himself relates that, when quite a boy, he was in the habit of making extracts of all the striking passages he met with in the course of his reading, by which means he acquired a ready use of the pen. The insufficient circumstances of his family prevented his education being cultivated in the schools till nearly fifteen; at which age he was sent to the Gymnasium of Stade, then under the direction of Gehlen, where in a short time he highly distinguished himself in classical literature. Intended for the clerical profession, he entered the university of Göttingen in 1759, for the purpose of completing his theological studies; but whether the advice of Hollmann (afterwards his father-in-law), with whom he had formed a close intimacy, produced a change in his plans, or that the mathematical instructions of Professors Kaestner and Mayer were more congenial to his mind than divinity, he abandoned the career marked out for him, and devoted himself to the natural sciences and their application, as well as to mathematics; whilst he cultivated philology with such zeal, that he