522 Royal Society. 



of my predecessors, Sir Joseph Banks and Sir H. Davy, by again 

 bestowing a medal on one who is an honour to the Royal Society 

 and pre-eminently distinguished for his mathematical attainments. 

 The labours of your life are too well known to the scientific world 

 to require any eulogium from me, and I consider that in this tribute 

 to your paper on astronomical refraction, we are rather doing an 

 honour to ourselves than to you*. 



Mr. Brown — in conferring the Copley Medal on you for your 

 valuable discoveries in vegetable impregnation f, I am quite sure 

 that the voice of scientific Europe will respond to the decision of 

 the Council of the Royal Society. The Academic des Sciences 

 has already pronounced on your merits, as also on those of Mr. 

 Ivory, by electing you as well as that gentleman to a seat among 

 their foreign members; and the University of Oxford has also, by 

 an honorary degree, given you a similar testimonial. That you are 

 one of our fellows is to myself a circumstance peculiarly agreeable, 

 as it must be to the whole body over whom I have the honour to 

 preside. Your discoveries in the particular botanical question, for 

 which I have to give you the Copley Medal, are so important, not 

 only in a botanical, but also in a general scientific point of view, by 

 showing the close analogies of animal and vegetable life, that the 

 Committee of Zoology have felt it as much their province as that of 

 the Committee of Botany, to recommend that the Copley Medal 

 should be bestowed upon you ; and the Council have come to an 

 imanimous resolution to give it, though at the same time other gen- 

 tlemen were recommended by other scientific committees, with whom 

 even an unsuccessful rivalry Avould be no mean praise. 



I hope, Mr. Brown, that you may long enjoy life and leisure to 

 pursue researches so valuable to science and so honourable to the 

 country of which you are a native. 



In drawing up the following notice of the losses which the Royal 

 Society has sustained during the last year, in conformity with the 

 practice of my predecessors, I have availed myself of the assistance 

 of one of the Fellows, whose acquaintance with the labours of men of 

 science peculiarly qualified him for the execution of a task which I 

 could not myself have ventured to undertake. I therefore will not 

 longer occupy your time by any further I'cmarks of my own, but 

 will conclude by the expression of my present wishes for the pros- 

 perity of the Royal Society, and for its success in furthering the 

 no])le ends for which it was instituted. 



The Rev. Martin Davy was originally a member of the medical 



[* Mr. Ivory's paper on the astronomical refractions will be found re- 

 printed in our last, present, and next volumes. — Edit.] 



f The following are the discoveries referred to : viz., the organization of 

 the vegetable ovule, immediately before fecundation, (published in 1826); 

 and the direct action of the pollen, manifested by the contact established be- 

 tween it and that point of the ovulum where the embryo subsequently first 

 becomes visible, and published in papers, in the years 1832 and 1833, and 

 communicated to the Linnean Society. [See Phil. Mag. First Series, vol. 

 Ixvii. p. 352 ; Phil. Mag. and Annals, N. S., vol. x, p. 437 ; and L. & E. 

 Phil. Mag. vol. i. p. 70. — Edit.] 



