Excerpt from Sir William Flower Although the complete manuscript of this volume was placed in the hands of the editor before the publication of the late Mr. C. J. Cornish's Lifi' of Sir William Flower (in yet the present writer was aware that such a work was in progress, and that it would deal with the social and personal rather than with the scientific side of Sir William's career. Consequently it was decided at an early period of the work to con centrate attention in the present volume on the latter aspect of the subject; as indeed is only fitting in the case of a biography belonging to a series specially devoted to men of science. An incidental advantage of this arrangement is that the writer has been able in the main to confine himself to the discussion of topics with which he is more or less familiar, rather than to attempt to chronicle events and episodes to which he must of necessity be a stranger, and to attempt an appreciation of a fine character for which he is in no wise qualified. It will be obvious from the above, that any references in the text to earlier biographies do not relate to Mr. Cornish's volume. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.