_Mackey's "Theory of the Earth"_ (Vol. viii. pp. 468. 565.).--
"Died, on Saturday se'night, at Doughty's Hospital in this city, Samson
Arnold Mackey, aged seventy-eight years. The deceased was born at
Haddiscoe, and was a natural son of Captain Samson Arnold of Lowestoft.
He has been long known to many of the scientific persons of Norwich,
and was remarkable for the originality of his views upon the very
abstruse subject of mythological astronomy, in which he exhibited great
sagacity, and maintained his opinions with extraordinary pertinacity.
He received but a moderate education; was put apprentice to a shoemaker
at the age of eleven, served his time, and for many years afterwards
was in the militia. He did not again settle in Norwich until 1811, when
he hired the attic storey of a small house in St. Paul's, where he
followed his business and pursued his favourite studies. About 1822 he
published his first part of _Mythological Astronomy_, and gave lectures
to a select few upon the science in general. In 1825 he published his
_Theory of the Earth_, and several pamphlets upon the antiquity of the
Hindoos. His room, in which he worked, took his meals, slept, and gave
his lectures, was a strange exhibition of leather, shoes, wax,
victuals, sketches of sphinxes, zodiacs, planispheres; together with
orreries of his own making, geological maps and drawings, illustrative
of the Egyptian and Hindoo Mythologies. He traced all the geological
changes to the different inclinations of the earth's axis to the plane
of its orbit, and was fully persuaded that about 420,000 years ago,
according to his theory, when the poles of the earth were last in that
position, the geological phenomena now witnessed were produced. From
his singular habits, he was of course looked upon with wonder by his
poor neighbours, and those better informed were inclined to annoy him
as to his religious opinions. He had a hard struggle of late years to
obtain subsistence, and his kind friend and patron the late Mr.
Moneyment procured for him the asylum in which he died. He held
opinions widely different to most men; but it must not be forgotten
that, humble as he was, his scientific acquirements gained him private
interviews with the late Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Somerset, and many
learned men in the metropolis."
The above is taken from the _Norwich Mercury_ of August 12, 1843.