1850.] Linnean Society. 91 



led him to take an active interest in, and to contributely largely to, 

 many of our public charitable institutions, secured him the warm 

 attachment of a numerous circle of friends. He was unmarried, and 

 died on the 13th of November last, a few days after the completion 

 of his 75th year. His election into the Royal Society took place in 

 1807, and into this Society in ISIO. 



Anthony Todd Thomson, M.D., Fellow of the Royal College of 

 Physicians, was educated at Edinburgh, where his father held an 

 appointment in the Post Office. On the establishment of the London 

 University he was named the first Professor of Materia Medica in 

 that Institution, to which, after the retirement of Dr. Gordon Smith, 

 he added the duties of Professor of Forensic Medicine. As a lecturer 

 be obtained great and deserved reputation ; and his extensive know- 

 ledge of the Materia Medica, together with his acquirements in che- 

 mistry and botany, peculiarly fitted him for the professorship which 

 he so long and ably filled. His principal publications were his 

 ' Conspectus of the Pharmacopoeias of the London, Edinburgh and 

 Dublin Colleges,' 12mo, 1810, which in 1845 reached its fifteenth 

 edition; 'The London Dispensatory,' 8vo, Lond. 1811, of which a 

 tenth edition was published in 1844; and 'Elements of Materia 

 Medica and Therapeutics,' 2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1832-1833, which 

 reached a third edition in 1843. But besides these greater works, 

 which are manuals of reference to almost every practitioner of medi- 

 cine, he published a multitude of dissertations on professional sub- 

 jects, either separately, or in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, 

 and in the various medical journals, as well as several contributions 

 to polite literature, which he successfully cultivated through a long 

 andusefnl life. Previously to taking his degree, he pursued his pro- 

 fession in London as a general practitioner, and gave lectures on 

 botany, of which in 1822 he commenced the publication under the 

 title of "Lectures on the Elements of Botany, Part L, containing 

 the Descriptive Anatomy of those organs on which the growth and 

 preservation of the Vegetable depends," vol. i., 8vo ; but of this, 

 his only strictly natural history publication, no further portion ap- 

 peared. He died at Ealing on the 3rd of July last, at the age of 

 71, having been a Fellow of the Linnean Society since 1812. 



Two important losses have also been sustained in the Foreign list 

 of the Society. 



Henri-M. Ducrotay de Blainville, a profound zoologist and com- 

 parative anatomist, was born at Arques, in the Department of the 

 Seine-Inferieure, about the year 1778. At an early age he went to 

 Paris, where he attended the lectures of Cuvier, and acquired the 



