n two and three millions."

BUXTON, JEDEDIAH (1707-1772), English arithmetician, was born on the 20th
of March 1707 at Elmton, near Chesterfield, in Derbyshire. Although his
father was schoolmaster of the parish, and his grandfather had been the
vicar, his education had been so neglected that he could not write; and his
knowledge, except of numbers, was extremely limited. How he came first to
know the relative proportions of numbers, and their progressive
denominations, he did not remember; but on such matters his attention was
so constantly riveted, that he frequently took no cognizance of external
objects, and when he did, it was only with reference to their numbers. He
measured the whole lordship of Elmton, consisting of some thousand acres,
simply by striding over it, and gave the area not only in acres, roods and
perches, but even in square inches. After this, he reduced them into square
hairs'-breadths, reckoning forty-eight to each side of the inch. His memory
was so great, that in resolving a question he could leave off and resume
the operation again at the same point after the lapse of a week, or even of
several months. His perpetual application to figures prevented the smallest
acquisition of any other knowledge. His wonderful faculty was tested in
1754 by the Royal Society of London, who acknowledged their satisfaction by
presenting him with a handsome gratuity. During his visit to the metropolis
he was taken to see the tragedy of _Richard III._ performed at Drury Lane
theatre, but his whole mind was given to the counting of the words uttered
by David Garrick. Similarly, he set himself to count the steps of the
dancers; and he declared that the innumerable sounds produced by the
musical instruments had perplexed him beyond measure. He died in 1772.

A memoir appeared in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for June 1754, to which,
probably through the medium of a Mr Holliday, of Haughton Hall,
Nottinghamshire, Buxton had contributed several letters. In this memoir,
his age is given as forty-nine, which points to his birth in 1705; the date
adopted above is on the authority of Lysons' _Magna Britannia_
(Derbyshire).

BUXTON, SIR THOMAS FOWELL (1786-1845), English philanthropist, was born in
Essex on the 1st of April 1786, and was educated at Trinity College,
Dublin, where, in spite of his early education having been neglected, hard
work made him one of the first men of his time, with a high reputation as a
speaker. In