Transactions' for 1775 on the Freezing of boiled Water; the other in the second vol. of the 'Edinburgh Transactions,' on the Iceland Hot Springs. Dr. Black expired in the seventy-first year of his age, without any convulsion, shock, or stupor to announce or retard the approach of death. Being at table with his usual fare, some bread, a few prunes, and a measured quantity of milk diluted with water, and having the cup in his hand when the last stroke of the pulse was given, he set it down on his knees, which were joined together, and kept it steady with his hand in the manner of a person perfectly at his ease; and in this attitude he expired without a drop being spilt or a feature in his countenance changed. His servant coming in saw him in this posture and left the room, supposing him asleep. On returning soon after, he saw him sitting as before and found that he had expired.--_Brougham's Lives of Philosophers._ London and Glasgow, 1855.--_Encyclopædia Britannica_, Eighth Edition. HENRY CORT. Born 1740. Died 1800. The sad history of this great inventor, who has been well surnamed "The Father of the iron trade," is comparatively soon told. Although his discoveries in the manufacture of iron were so important as to have been one of the chief causes in the establishment of our modern engineering, little is known of the life of the unfortunate inventor. He was born in 1740 at Lancaster, where his father carried on the trade of a builder and brickmaker. In 1765, at the age of twenty-five, he was engaged in the carrying on of the business of a navy agent in Surrey Street, Strand, in which he is said to have realized considerable profits. While conducting this business Cort became aware of the inferiority of British iron in comparison with that of foreign countries, and entered on a series of experiments with the object of improving its manufacture. In 1775 he relinquished his business as a navy agent and took a lease of some premises at Fonltey, near Fareham, where he erected a forge and an iron-mill. He afterwards took into partnership Samuel Jellicoe, son of Adam Jellicoe, then deputy-paymaster of seamen's wages, a connection which ultimately proved the cause of all Cort's subsequent misfortunes. Ford in 1747, Dr. Roebuck in 1762, the brothers Cranege in 1766, and Peter Onions, of Merthyr Tydvil, in 1783, had all introduced valuable additions to the then known processes of iron manufacture. In 1783-4 Cort took out his two patents which, while combining the inventions of his predecessors, specified so many valuable improvements of an original character, that they established a new era in the history of iron manufacture, and raised it to the highest state of prosperity. Mr. Truran,[51] in speaking of Cort, remarks "The mode of piling iron to form large pieces, as described in his inventions, is the one at use in the present day."--"The method of puddling iron now in use is the same as that patented by Henry Cort. There has been no essential