Before resuming our narrative it may be proper to state some particulars respecting the celebrated founder of the British Museum, to whom there has been more than one occasion of alluding in the preceding pages. Sir Hans Sloane was born at Killileagh in Ireland on the 16th April 1660. His father was a Scotchman, who headed a colony which, in the reign of James I., was planted in the northern part of the sister isle. Having at an early age evinced a decided taste for natural history, he chose the profession of medicine, and after studying four years in London, where he became acquainted with Boyle and Ray, went to Paris, and afterwards to Montpellier, in which latter place he took his degree. At the age of twenty-four he settled in London, and became a Member of the Royal Society. In April 1687, he was made a Fellow of the College of Physicians, and in November following embarked for Jamaica as physician to the Duke of Albemarle, who was appointed governor of the island; but that nobleman having died soon after his arrival, Dr Sloane returned to England after an absence of only fifteen months. In 1693, he was made secretary to the Royal Society, and in the ensuing year named physician to Christ's Hospital; in 1701, he obtained a medical diploma from Oxford, and, in 1708, was elected an Associate of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. In 1716, he was created a baronet by George I., an honour which no medical man had previously obtained, and afterwards was raised to the rank of physician-general to the army. On the accession of George II. he was made physician in ordinary to his Majesty; and on the death of Sir Isaac Newton, in 1727, succeeded that illustrious philosopher in the chair of the Royal Society, which he occupied till 1740, when his advanced age induced him to resign it. He died at Chelsea on the 11th January 1752.