246 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON'S ADDRESS. [May 23, 1859. 



for the press any memoir which was communicated by an unprac- 

 tised writer. 



In subsequent years, and when he sat in Parliament (i. e., from 

 1826 to 1848), Mr. Warburton was placed during the years 1843-4 

 at the head of that Geological Society for which he had so long and 

 so zealously laboured ; but regardless of his own reputation, and 

 occupied with public affairs and close committee work in the House 

 of Commons, he neglected to write out and print his Anniversary 

 Addresses, though he delivered them extempore and with much 

 effect from the chair in Somerset House. 



It will ever be remembered to the honour of our deceased mem- 

 ber, that he was the intimate friend of the illustrious Wollaston, of 

 whose writings and discoveries he was well qualified to judge ; for 

 Henry Warburton was never superficial, and every subject with 

 which he grappled was thoroughly mastered. As in commencing my 

 scientific career I looked up to him as a guide, so shall I never 

 forget my last interview with Wollaston a few days before his death, 

 when Warburton, in watching over his friend, was taking down the 

 words of that bequest which the great philosopher made to the cul- 

 tivators of the science of geology. 



The unwillingness of Warburton to appear as an author in his 

 own name, founded, I believe, on his keen sense of the necessity 

 of rendering every phrase precisely accurate, soon after proved of 

 signal disadvantage to the memory of the man who of all others 

 he most truly loved and respected. The biography of the great Dr. 

 Wollaston had to be written, and Warburton undertook the task ; 

 and though I have reason to think that he had made some progress 

 in the work, he never completed it. That this delay prevented 

 the feloge of Wollaston being penned by Cuvier himself, is, indeed, 

 too true, inasmuch as that great man, then Perpetual Secretary of 

 the French Academy of Sciences, urged me (during one of my 

 visits to Paris) to induce Mr. Warburton to delay no longer, and 

 furnish him with the necessary materials to do justice to our deceased 

 countryman, as one of the eight Foreign Members of the Institute. 

 Yet with all this procrastination as respected the publication of 

 any work in his own name, Mr. Warburton, I repeat, afforded con- 

 stant literary aid to all those who were struggling on to advance 

 science, and was, in truth, a terse and lucid writer. 



In like manner his Parliamentary contemporaries will, I am sure, 

 bear me out when I say, that if a bill had to be accurately and per- 

 spicuously drawn, or the Keport of a Committee to be well put 



