1851.] Linnean Society. 137 



of mortality the so-called Carlisle Tables, which were for many- 

 years adopted as the basis of calculation in Life Assurance Offices. 

 He had formed a very extensive and well-selected library, said to 

 contain the most complete collection extant on the subject of Vital 

 Statistics, and rich also in works of Natural History ; the latter 

 science constituted the delight and recreation, as the former did the 

 business of his life. He was particularly attached to botany, and 

 latterly to geology also ; but his especial favourites were the Mosses 

 and Jungermanniee, the British species of which he had carefully stu- 

 died, although he never published anything on the subject. Some 

 years before his death he retired from his official connection with 

 the Sun Insurance Office, and died at Upper Clapton, where he had 

 long resided, on the 4th of January in the present year, and in the 

 seventy- sixth year of his age. 



Spencer Joshua Alwyne Compton, Marquis of Northampton, late 

 President of the Royal Society, was born on the 2nd of January, 

 1790, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and took his degree 

 of M.A. in 1810. Lord Compton entered Parliament in 1812, as 

 the successor of Mr. Percival, whose near relation he was, in the 

 borough of Northampton. In 1815 he married Miss Maclean Cle- 

 phane, daughter and heiress of General Clephane, and for many 

 years Rome became the favourite residence of Lord and Lady 

 Compton, and their house the centre of attraction to the genius and 

 talent of every country congregated there. In 1828 Lord Compton 

 succeeded, by the death of his father, to the Marquisate of North- 

 ampton, and in 1830 he had the misfortune to lose his amiable and 

 accomplished wife, who died suddenly soon after her confinement. 

 In science. Lord Northampton attached himself more especially to 

 geology, and he was one of the earliest Presidents of the Geological 

 Society. He presided at the Sixth Meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science, held at Bristol in 1836, and 

 at the Eighteenth, held at Swansea in 1848. From 1838 to 1849 

 he filled the Chair of the Royal Society, in which important posi- 

 tion he distinguished himself by his general information in matters 

 of science, literature and art, by his mild and courteous demeanour, 

 by the simplicity of his mind, and the impartiality of his conduct. 

 The death of his son-in-law. Lord Alford, at the commencement of 

 the present year, affected him greatly ; his constitution, always 

 weakly, seems to have given way under the shock, and he died on 

 the 17 th of January, at his seat at Castle Ashby, of a quiet and 

 almost insensible decay, at the age of sixty-one. 



Alexander Raphael, Esq., M.P., was by descent an Armenian, 



