364 RE-ELECTION OF SIR R. MURCHISON AS PRESIDENT. 



Sib Roderick begged to assure the Society that when he took the Chair, on 

 the demise of his lamented friend Admiral Beechey, he said with all sincerity, 

 that he did not feel that he could efficiently carry out the duties beyond this 

 Anniversary. Having found that with the work, he had thriven, as it were, 

 in health, he was ready to continue his services, if the Society thought him 

 worthy of it. He could only say that, if he should be elected at the next 

 Anniversary, he should consider it the highest honour that could be conferred 

 upon any scientific Englishman ; for he should then have entered into his third 

 Consulate, i. e. his third Presidency ; and, if he lived to a future Anniversary, 

 he should have delivered six Addresses to the Society, all of them infinitely 

 too long, but all prepared with the greatest pleasure— a pleasure the greater, if 

 he could believe that they had conduced, in the slightest degree, to the advance- 

 ment of geographical science. 



