LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. xly 
William Somerville, M.D., died on the 25th of June, 1860, at 
Florence, in his 92nd year, being thus one of two nonagenarians 
who have departed from among the Fellows of the Linnean Society 
in the past year. 
He was formerly one of the principal Inspectors of the Army 
Medical Board, and Physician to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. 
James Forbes Young, M.D., was born in April, 1796. He was 
a magistrate and deputy lieutenant for Surrey, and an eminent 
medical practitioner in Lambeth, having succeeded his father in 
practice in the year 1836. His early education was conducted at 
the Charter House, and he afterwards became a student of medicine 
at Guy’s Hospital, whence he proceeded to Edinburgh, where he 
graduated in 1817. His unwearied industry and talents, combined 
with his amicable and conciliatory disposition and deportment, 
naturally led to a great extension of the practice he had inherited 
from his father, and justly secured him the love and esteem of all 
who had occasion to consult him, or came within the sphere of his 
friendship. Like many others in his profession, he loved natural 
science, and was distinguished by his ardent zeal in the cultivation 
of botany and geology. Early in life he began the formation of 
an herbariwm, which is said to be rich in British plants collected 
and arranged by himself. He also devoted much time and atten- 
tion to, and was very successful in the cultivation of ferns, of which 
plants he had perhaps one of the choicest collections in the neigh- 
bourhood of London. In Geology his attention appears to have 
been chiefly devoted to the study and coilection of chalk fossils, 
of which he possessed an extensive and fine series. In addition 
to these professional and scientific pursuits he was no mean anti- 
quarian, and had made a considerable collection of prints relating 
chiefly either to history or topography, and he had himself pro- 
fusely illustrated editions of “ Grainger’s Biographical History of 
England,” “ Pennant’s London,” and the “ History of Lambeth 
and Charter House,’’—his own “ alma mater, ’”’ besides other works 
of a more miscellaneous character. 
Two years before his death his useful and laborious career was 
interrupted by an attack of paralysis, from which he never wholly 
recovered, and, gradually declining, he died on the 30th of June, 
1860, and was buried in Lambeth churchyard, which also contains 
the tombs of the “ three Tradescants, grandsire, father and son,” 
restored some years ago under Dr. Young’s superintendence. 
In our list of Fortran MemBers we have to lament the loss of 
one of the oldest and most famous of European Zoologists, the 
