1842.] Linnean Society. 135 



i»er of Members whom the Society had lost during the past year, of 

 some of whom the Secretary read the following notices : — 



John Ansley, Esq. 



Sir Wm. Beatty, Knt., M.D., F.R.S., well known as having been 

 surgeon of the Victory at the memorable action oflF Cape Trafalgar, 

 and as having in that capacity assisted at the last moments of Lord 

 Nelson, of which he afterwards published an account. 



Sir Charles Bell, K.H., F.R.S. Lond. 8^ Ed., Professor of Surgery 

 in the University of Edinburgh. 



The very recent death of this eminent surgeon and distinguished 

 physiologist precludes on the present occasion any detailed account 

 of his Hfe and works. He was born in Edinburgh in 1778, and the 

 early part of his life was spent in his native city as the assistant of 

 his brother John in his surgical lectures. He came to London in 

 1806, and became lectui'er on surgery at the Hunterian School in 

 Windmill Street, and afterwards one of the surgeons of the Middlesex 

 Hospital. His important discoveries in the functions of the Nervous 

 System, by which his fame has been most widely spread, were com- 

 municated in a series of papers read before the Royal Society, com- 

 mencing in 1821. On the accession of King William the Fourth he 

 received the honour of knighthood ; and in 1836 he returned to 

 Edinburgh, having been appointed to the Professorship of Surgery 

 in that University. He died almost suddenly at the beginning of 

 the present month. 



The Rev. Isaac Bell. 



John Eddowes Bowman, Esq., was born at Nantwich in Cheshire, 

 on the 30th October, 1785. He was in early life confined to busi- 

 ness during more than twelve hours of the day, and yet con- 

 trived, by early rising, to cultivate a taste for botany, which he had 

 imbibed from his father. The small town in which he lived fur- 

 nished no persons of congenial pursuits with whom he could asso- 

 ciate, but this circumstance, though it limited his progress, did not 

 damp his ardour. He became the manager of a bank at Welch Pool, 

 and with an income extremely limited, was not only enabled to 

 give a liberal education to his rising family, but, by the help of such 

 books and instruments as he could purchase, to extend his studies 

 to many branches of natural science with great zeal and success. In 

 1 824 he became a partner in a banking establishment in Wrexham, 

 from which he retired in 1830, and never entered into business again; 

 for being in possession of a moderate competence, he willingly relin- 

 quished together the profits and the cares of active life, in exchange 

 for the tranquil happiness he hoped to enjoy from the undivided pur- 



