488 THE HOOKER MEDAL. 



period of sixty years. The presentation was made by Dr. Giinther, 

 the President of the Society, and was accompanied by a suitable 

 address ; Sir Joseph's speech acknowledging the presentation is 

 printed in full in tlie recently issued part of the Proceedings of the 

 Society, from which we reprint it. Sir Joseph said : — 



" 1 cannot express my sense of the great, the exceptionally great 

 honour which your Council has conferred upon me in the founding 

 and awarding of this beautiful medal. In receiving it, let me assure 

 you that I value it as much for the evidence it bears of the friendly 

 regard of my associates as for their all too high estimate of my 

 endeavours towards the promotion of science. Furthermore, let me 

 say that from no scientific body could it be received by me with 

 more cordial welcome than from the Liunean Society, which was 

 the first to which I have the honour of belonging to enrol me 

 amongst its Fellows, and which especially cultivates those branches 

 of knowledge to which I have devoted the best years of my life. 

 To these considerations must be added what you yourself have 

 alluded to, namely, my hereditary interest in a Society of which my 

 father and grandfather were very early Fellows, and both of them 

 contributors to its Transactions. To this latter circumstance it may 

 perhaps be due that I was elected at a very early age, being, I 

 believe, the youngest member of our body with no further scientific 

 claims on the support of my electors than that I was serving as a 

 naturalist in the Antarctic expedition under Captain Eoss, where 

 I happened to be the youngest, as I am now the only surviving 

 officer of those then under the command of that intrepid navigator. 

 I may mention that Captain Ross was himself a Fellow, and had a 

 copy of our Transactions in his cabin, which was a godsend to me. 

 I was in the Falkland Isles when my election took place, and nearly 

 a year and a half elapsed before my captain and I knew that we 

 were fellow Linneans. 



" In 1842 the Lord Bishop of Norwich was President. He was 

 the first of ten under whom I have been privileged to sit. Had the 

 Society adopted the rule of biennial presidents I should have sat 

 under thirty at least, which, in my estimation, would have detracted 

 greatly from the dignity which I attach to the chair, and I venture 

 to think from its utility also. In the year 1842 there were 610 

 members of the Society (including fellows, foreign members, and 

 associates), with fully one-fourth of whom I soon became personally 

 acquainted. Twenty-eight years afterwards, that is about midway 

 between the former date and the present time, the number of my 

 personal friends in the Society had risen to one-half of the whole 

 body. Our numbers are now 820, but the proportion of my personal 

 friends among them has inevitably shrunk from my having outlived 

 so many associates of my middle age. And this leads me to ask 

 your indulgence for one more egotistical detail. It is that I am 

 perhaps the only Fellow who personally knew four of the 169 

 naturalists who, 110 years ago, formed the nucleus of our Society. 

 Of these four I knew two during my later teens : they were the Rev. 

 W. Kirby, the author, with Spence, of the immortal Introduction to 

 Entomology ; and Dr. Heysham, of Carlisle, an excellent entomolo- 



