science which has since become identified with his name. Lavoisier's
wife also was a woman of real scientific ability, who not only shared
in her husband's pursuits, but even undertook the task of engraving the
plates that accompanied his 'Elements.'

The late Dr. Buckland had another true helper in his wife, who assisted
him with her pen, prepared and mended his fossils, and furnished many of
the drawings and illustrations of his published works. "Notwithstanding
her devotion to her husband's pursuits," says her son, Frank Buckland,
in the preface to one of his father's works, "she did not neglect the
education of her children, but occupied her mornings in superintending
their instruction in sound and useful knowledge. The sterling value of
her labours they now, in after-life, fully appreciate, and feel most
thankful that they were blessed with so good a mother." [2019]

A still more remarkable instance of helpfulness in a wife is presented
in the case of Huber, the Geneva naturalist. Huber was blind from his
seventeenth year, and yet he found means to study and master a branch
of natural history demanding the closest observation and the keenest
eyesight. It was through the eyes of his wife that his mind worked as if
they had been his own. She encouraged her husband's studies as a means
of alleviating his privation, which at length he came to forget; and his
life was as prolonged and happy as is usual with most naturalists. He
even went so far as to declare that he should be miserable were he to
regain his eyesight. "I should not know," he said, "to what extent
a person in my situation could be beloved; besides, to me my wife is
always young, fresh, and pretty, which is no light matter." Huber's
great work on 'Bees' is still regarded as a masterpiece, embodying a
vast amount of original observation on their habits and natural history.
Indeed, while reading his descriptions, one would suppose that they were
the work of a singularly keensighted man, rather than of one who had
been entirely blind for twenty-five years at the time at which he wrote
them.

Not less touching was the devotion of Lady Hamilton to the service
of her husband, the late Sir William Hamilton, Professor of Logic and
Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. After he had been stricken
by paralysis through overwork at the age of fifty-six, she became hands,
eyes, mind, and everything to him. She identified herself with his work,
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