In the year 1827 Samuel Crompton's melancholy life came to an end. He died at his house in King Street, Great Bolton, aged seventy-three, of no particular complaint, but by the gradual decay of nature. His body was placed in a grave near the centre of the parish churchyard, underneath a flagstone with the following inscription:--"Beneath this stone are interred the mortal remains of Samuel Crompton, of Bolton, late of Hall-i'-th'-Wood, in the township of Tonge, inventor of the spinning machine called the _Mule_; who departed this life the 26th day of June, 1827, aged seventy-two years."[15]--_The Life and Times of Samuel Crompton, &c., by Gilbert J. French, F.S.A., &c._ Manchester and London, 1860. JOHN DALTON, D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., L. and E. MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. Born September 5, 1766. Died July 27, 1844. John Dalton was born at Eaglesfield, a small village in Cumberland, near Cockermouth. His father, Joseph Dalton, was a woollen-weaver, and at the birth of his second son, John, gained but a scanty subsistence by weaving common country goods. At the death of his elder brother, however, he inherited a small estate of sixty acres, which enabled him to give up weaving. John Dalton had consequently few opportunities of obtaining a good education; he was emphatically self-taught, and from his very childhood began to acquire those habits of stern self-reliance and indomitable perseverance which in after life, rather than any direct inspirations of genius (as Dalton himself used to affirm), enabled him to work out his grand discovery of the 'Atomic Theory.'