140 lloyal Society. 



remuneration, Which was supplied by means of contributions to the 

 perishable periodical literature of the day. 



Colonel Mark Wilks went to Bengal in 1783, and served in dif- 

 ferent military and civil capacities, in various parts of India. In the 

 year 180-1 he was appointed principal Resident at the Court of My-t 

 sore, and in the following year he published a very able Report upon 

 the financial condition, resources, and many other subjects connected 

 with the administration of the government of that country. He was 

 the author of " Historical Sketches of the South of India, in an 

 attempt to trace the History of Mysore to the Extinction of the 

 Mohammedan Dynasty in 1799," — a work of great learning and au- 

 thority : he was afterwards appointed Governor of St. Helena, and 

 he died in England in the course of the present year. 



Colonel Wilks must be considered as one of those distinguished 

 men who have been formed by the system of our Indian Empire. 

 The possession of great commands, upon which the happiness and 

 misery of considerable nations are dependent, and the intense feeling 

 of responsibility which is connected with the administration of 

 trusts so important, is well calculated, under all circumstances, to 

 call forth into action the highest powers of the human mind ; 

 and particularly so, when they have been previously exercised 

 and fortified, as in our Indian service, by the severe study of Ori- 

 ental languages, and by the successive occupation of different offices, 

 with a great diversity of duties : it is to such causes that we are to 

 attribute the frequent union which we observe in this service of the 

 greatest civil and military talents witli the most profound acqui- 

 sitions in Oriental learning ; it is to this system that we are indebted 

 for the production of a Duncan and a Monro, an Elphinstone and a 

 Raffles, a Colebrooke and a Malcolm, and a crowd of great men 

 who have done so much honour to our Indian Government. 



Alexander Barry, Professor of Chemistry to Guy's Hospital, and 

 the author of a short paper in our Transactions for 1831, " On the 

 Chemical Action of Atmospheric Electricity*," fell a victim to the 

 imprudent pursuit of his chemical inquiries. He was making expe- 

 riments upon some gases in a highly condensed state, when an ex- 

 plosion took place, by the effects of which he was so much injured 

 as to occasion his death shortly afterwards. He was elected a Fel- 

 low of this Society in the course of the last year. 



John Shaw, Architect, is advantageously known to the public by 

 several works in the Metropolis, particularly the great hall in Christ's 

 Hospital, and the new church of St. Dunstan in Fleet Street : works 

 which are extremely effective, and well adapted to their objects and 

 positions. 



Stephen Groombridge, Esq., was the author of two papers in our 

 Transactions for 1810 and 1814, of considerable interest and value, 

 upon the subject of astronomical refractions f: his observations were 



* An abstract of Mr. Barry's paper appeared in the Philosophical Ma- 

 gazine and Annals, N.S. vol. ix. p. 3« r )7.— Edit. 



f Abstracts of Mr. Groombridge's papers were given in Phil. Mag. 

 vol. xxxv. p. 303, and vol. xliii. p. 306. — Edit. 



