( 374 ) [May 25, 1857. 



ADDRESS 



TO THE 



ROYAL GEOGIIAPHICAL SOCIETY 

 OF LOx\DON; 



Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting on the 2bth Mai/, 1857, 

 By Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, 



G.C.St.S., D.C.L., F.R.S., &C., 

 PRESIDENT. 



Gentlemen, — Having been called, through your kindness, to resume 

 the honourable duty of presiding over you at a season, when the 

 Eoyal Geographical Society has attained a condition more flourish- 

 ing than its warmest well-wishers had anticipated, it is grievous to 

 open this Address by dwelling upon the decease of my prede- 

 cessor, the gallant Admiral Beechey, as well as that of my successor 

 when I vacated this chair in 1854, the noble Earl of Ellesmere. 

 Never since the foundation of our body has the hand of death 

 fallen so heavily and so rapidly upon our leaders, and never has 

 a more painful task been thrown upon your President, than that of 

 recording the loss of two such men, however mitigated by the 

 endeavour to do justice to their eminent and dignified characters. 

 To delineate all their merits, even if I had the power, would be 

 impracticable in the brief space of time to which I can lay claim 

 on this occasion, and I shall, therefore, simply endeavour to place 

 on record some of the salient features in the characters of my 

 lamented friends, which more particularly connect them with the 

 great pursuits of this useful Society. 



Rear- Admiral Frederick William Beechey, the son of the late Sir 

 William Beechey, r.a., was born in February, 1796, and before he 

 reached the age of ten years was already serving as a midshipman 

 in the Royal Navy. He bore a part in Commodore Schomberg's 

 brilliant and decisive action off the Isle of France in 1811, and 



