[49] He alludes to a rich piece of land near the river Parrot; a specimen of the soil of which Mr. Poole had sent him for analysis. In this year, Davy was deprived of one of his earliest and most attached friends, after a lingering illness, during which his symptoms, by the alternations which characterise consumption, had inspired his friends with hope, only to chill them with despondency;--Gregory Watt terminated his earthly career.[50] [50] Gregory Watt was one of those philosophers to whose memory justice has not awarded its due. He was a meteor, whose light no sooner flashed upon us than it expired. His paper upon the gradual refrigeration of Basalt, alone entitled him to a distinguished rank amongst experimentalists. It was read before the Royal Society in May; and he expired in the following October. On the first impression which this melancholy event produced upon his feelings, Davy wrote a letter to his friend Clayfield, from which the following is an extract. "I scarcely dare to write upon the subject--I would fain do what Hamlet does, when, in awe and horror at the ghost of his father, he attempts to call up the ludicrous feeling, but being unable to do so, he merely employs the words which are connected with it.--I would be gay, or I would write gaily, in alluding to the loss we have both sustained, but I feel that it is impossible. Poor Watt!--He ought not to have died. I could not persuade myself that he would die; and until the very moment when I was assured of his fate, I would not believe he was in any danger. "His letters to me, only three or four months ago, were full of spirit, and spoke not of any infirmity of body, but of an increased strength of mind. Why is this in the order of Nature, that there is such a difference in the duration and destruction of her works? If the mere stone decays, it is to produce a soil which is capable of nourishing the moss and the lichen; when the moss and the lichen die and decompose, they produce a mould which becomes the bed of life to grass, and to a more exalted species of vegetables. Vegetables are the food of animals,--the less perfect animals of the more perfect; but in man, the faculties and intellect are perfected,--he rises, exists for a little while in disease and misery, and then would seem to disappear, without an end, and without producing any effect. "We are deceived, my dear Clayfield, if we suppose that the human being who has formed himself for action, but who has been unable to act, is lost in the mass of being: there is some arrangement of things which we can never comprehend, but in which his faculties will be applied.