LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. XXXI 



of National Education owed much to the warm approval of his 

 system by the Government Commissioners, after several official 

 visits and lengthened communications. Mr. Chambers was the 

 author of many works connected with education ; he was an early 

 member of the Society of Arts, an enthusiastic admirer of the fine 

 arts, occasionally a public critic on the subject, and formed a 

 choice collection of works by British artists. Besides his per- 

 sonal friends and relatives, some thousands of pupils, many now 

 rising in the ranks of literature, science, and the arts, will recall 

 with pleasure the instructions they received from his amply stored 

 mind, his enthusiastic love of nature, his high moral precepts and 

 example, his genial kindliness, and his energetic endeavours to sow 

 and foster the seeds of all worthy knowledge. The last ten years 

 of his life were passed in retirement, and he died at Balderton, in 

 Nottinghamshire, Dec. 20th, 1858, in the 74th year of his age. 



John Samuel Gaskoin, JEsq., was born at Bagshot in Surrey in 

 September 1790, and received his education at a private school. 

 At the age of sixteen he became a house-pupil of the Marylebone 

 Infirmary, and subsequently attended the necessary lectures, 

 together with the hospital practice of St. George's, St. Bartholo- 

 mew's, and the "Westminster Lying-in Hospital. In 1816 he went 

 to Paris, where he remained about two years, still prosecuting his 

 medical studies. On his return to London he established himself 

 in practice, and in 1823 he was appointed Surgeon in Ordinary to 

 King George the Fourth at Brighton, and in 1830 received a 

 similar appointment to King William the Fourth. He was for 

 many years Surgeon to Her Majesty's Theatre, Consulting Sur- 

 geon to the London Infirmary for Diseases of the Skin, and Ho- 

 norary Surgeon to the Royal Freemason's Institution for Female 

 Children. His attachment to Natural History, and especially to 

 Conchology, led him to form a considerable collection of shells, 

 which was particularly rich in the species of Cyprcea^ Marginella, 

 and Cohmhella ; and several Papers " On New Species of Cyprcea " 

 in the ' Proceedings of the Zoological Society,' bear witness to 

 the extent both of his collections and of his scientific knowledge 

 of them. He became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1853, 

 and, as a frequent attendant at our meetings, was well known to a 

 large number of our members as an amiable man of large informa- 

 tion, and a very agreeable companion. In the Zoological Societj^ 

 and at the Art Union he also took an active part. He died sud- 

 denly of disease of the heart, at his house in Clarges Street, May 

 Fair, while engaged in writing down the description of some shells 



