An?iiver sari/ of IS38. Address of the President, 437 



promise that the labour which this line of investigation demands 

 will be rewarded. I am fully persuaded that there is no portion of 

 the frontier line of our knowledge of which we can so certainly say, 

 " Here we are on the brink of great discoveries." Had Dr. 7 urner 

 been spared to us some years longer, I know no one who was more 

 likely to have had a principal share in such discoveries. Two papers 

 of his, in the Philosophical Transactions,* show that he was able to 

 deal with the atomic theory in a mode which combines the resources 

 of the skilful analytical chemist with the rigour of the mathematical 

 reasoner ; a combination which the right prosecution of that theory 

 requires, but which has not always been found in its cultivators. 



Dr. Turner lectured on chemistry at the London University from 

 its first foundation in 1828; he was there surrounded by students, 

 whose affection he gained by his kindness, as well as their admi- 

 ration by the clearness of his teaching. He also gave a course of 

 lectures on geology, in conjunction with Dr. Grant and Mr. Lindley, 

 each of those gentlemen taking a division of the subject with which 

 he was most familiar. Dr. Turner was snatched from science at the 

 early age of thirty-nine, having been born in the island of Jamaica 

 in 1796. He studied anatomy at Edinburgh, and chemistry at Got- 

 tingen, under the able chemist Friedrich Von Stromeyer, to whom 

 he dedicated his Elements of Chemistry; a work which has had, as 

 it well deserves, a very wide circulation among students f. 



In William Parish, B.D., Jacksonian Professor of Natural and 

 Experimental Philosophy in the University of Cambridge, the Society 

 has lost an honorary member, elected as such soon after its original 

 foundation, namely in November 18Q8, and one of a number of our 

 countrymen who were at that period placed upon the honorary list. 

 Professor Parish never employed himself peculiarly in geological pur- 

 suits as we now understand the term ; but it is to be recollected, 

 that within a few years of the date of his election, which I have men- 

 tioned, the investigation of the earth's structure made a rapid progress, 

 and, in consequence, assumed a more fixed and technical form. Pro- 

 fessor Parish's scientific studies were mainly directed to the arts, 

 manufactures, and machinery of the empire ; on these subjects he 

 delivered courses of lectures full of interest and instruction ; and he 

 was thus led to describe our mines, and the mode of working them. 



But no reference to particular portions of Professor Parish's labours 

 can convey a just notion of the impulse which he gave to the progress 

 of scientific knowledge within his own sphere of influence, by the habit 

 of seizing, with an active and vivid apprehension, upon prominent parts 

 of modern science, and conveying them, in a manner singularly clear 

 and simple, to his audience. Por a long course of years his lectures 

 were more eflficacious than any other circumstance in stimulating the 

 minds of men in his university to philosophical thought on physical 



• On the Composition of Chloride of Barium, 1829 ; Researches on Atomic 

 Weights, 1833. [See Phil. Mag. and Annals, N.S., vol. viii. p. 180; and 

 L. and E. Phil. Mag. vol. i. p. 109; iii. p. 448.— Edit. 



t [See also present volume, p. 275.] 



