274? Royal Society, 



empire, the deaths of so many of whom it has been my misfortune 

 to record in my recent addresses from this chair. 



Dr. John Latham reached the extraordinary age of ninety-seven 

 years, having enjoyed the full possession of his faculties and almost 

 unbroken health until within a few days of his death : he was the father 

 of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, and it is sixty-seven years since 

 his first paper, on a medical subject, was published in our Transactions. 

 He was the author of many papers on antiquarian subjects; but his 

 favourite study throughout life was natural history, and particularly 

 ornithology. He published, in 1781, his General Synopsis of Birds, 

 in six volumes quarto, and afterwards two supplementary volumes. 

 In 1792 he published his Index Ornithologicus, a complete system 

 of ornithology, arranged in classes, orders, genera and species, in 

 two volumes quarto. At the age of 82, he commenced his General 

 History of Birds, a magnificent work in eleven volumes quarto. He was 

 a man of very systematic habits and most amiable character, the tran- 

 quil course of whose long life was neither disturbed by scientific orpro- ' 

 fessional jealousies, nor embittered by the want of those enjoyments 

 which competence and domestic happiness and virtue alone can 

 confer. 



Dr. Tiarks was born at Jever in Oldenburg, and came to England 

 in 1810, when he was appointed Assistant-Librarian to Sir Joseph 

 Banks, through whose influence he was nominated Astronomer to 

 the Commission for settling the North American Boundary, under 

 the authority of the Treaty of Ghent. After his return to England, 

 in 1822, he was commissioned by the Admiralty, at the request of 

 the Board of Longitude, to ascertain, by means of a great number 

 of chronometers, the difierence of the longitudes of Falmouth and 

 Madeira, and subsequently of Falmouth and Dover, the results of 

 which were detailed in a very able paper in our Transactions for 

 1824, in which he pointed out and explained the origin of an error 

 of nearly 4" of time in the longitudes of all the stations of the Tri- 

 gonometrical Survey*. He was afterwards sent on a similar mission 

 to Heligoland and various stations in the North Seas, and on the 

 last occasion he was accompanied by Sir Humphry Davy, who 

 wished to try the effect of his protectors on the corrosion of the 

 copper sheathing of ships. In 1 825 he was recalled from Germany 

 to resume his astronomical surveys in America, where he was em- 

 ployed to ascertain the position and extent of the north-western 

 boundary'' of the Lake of the Woods, an operation in the execution 

 of which both he and the party who assisted him suffered the great- 

 est hardships and privations. He published various reports of his 

 surveys, and was necessarily much employed and consulted in the 

 difficult and embarrassing negotiations which have attended, and 

 unhappily still attend, the settlement of the important question of 

 the North American boundaries. Dr. Tiarks died in the forty- 

 eighth year of his age, at his native place, in consequence of a fever 

 which attacked a constitution already shattered and broken by the 

 severe labours and privations which he had endured. He was a 

 * See Phil. Mag., First Series, vol. ixiii. p. m^ 378, 



