and without giving a thought to the largeness of the sum offered, he indignantly threw back the cheque across the table and walked out of the office.[46] After this the company broke up, and Trevithick never realized a penny-piece from his really valuable possessions in that country. After his return from America but little is known of Trevithick; late in life he commenced a petition to Parliament, in which he asks for some grant or remuneration for his services to the country, by reason of the superiority of his machinery, stating that from the use of his engines the saving to the Cornish mines alone amounted to 100,000_l._ per annum; but before presenting this petition, he met with a monied partner, who supplied him with the means of perfecting his never-ceasing inventions. This was all Trevithick wanted, and the petition was consequently laid aside. Thus assisted he obtained a patent in 1831 for an improved steam engine; and another in the same year for a method or apparatus for heating apartments; and a third on the 22nd of September, 1832, for improvements on the steam engine, and in the application of steam power to navigation and locomotion. This was the last patent he took out; he died at Dartford in Kent during the following year, at the age of sixty-two. Trevithick, by his marriage with Miss Jane Harvey, had four sons and two daughters, all of whom are still living. His manners were blunt and unassuming, but yet possessed a certain kind of fascination which generally secured for him, in whatever society he might be, an eager and attentive auditory. In person he was tall and strongly made, being six feet two inches in height, and broad in proportion, and to this day stories of his extraordinary feats of strength are told among the miners of Cornwall. His life remains a record of constant but brilliant failures, and that from no inherent defect in his inventions, but solely from the absence in his character of that perseverance and worldly prudence necessary to bring every new undertaking to a successful commercial issue.--_Contributions to the Biography of R. Trevithick, by R. Edmunds, Jun., Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal_, October, 1859.--_The Land's End District, &c., with Brief Memoir of Ric. Trevithick, by R. Edmunds._ London and Penzance, 1862.--_All the Year Round_, August 4, 1860.--And other particulars taken from original and authentic sources. EDWARD TROUGHTON, F.R.A.S. Born October, 1753. Died June 12, 1835. Edward Troughton, the first astronomical instrument maker of our day, was born in the parish of Corney, on the south-west coast of Cumberland, and was the third son of a small farmer. An uncle of the same name, and his eldest brother John were settled in London as mathematical instrument makers; and as his second brother was apprenticed to the same business, Edward was designed to be a farmer, continuing to be his father's assistant till the age of seventeen.