98 president's address. 



is indebted for many valuable contributions, especially for the 

 splendid specimen of the Sun Fish, Orthagoriscus mola, which 

 had been so admirably preserved by Mr. John Hancock. 



I shall only select one more name, that of Mr. W. K. Loftus, 

 whom I had the pleasure to number among my friends, and to 

 allow him to pass away unrecorded would be ungrateful. In 

 recording his loss, I could not hope to present to you a 

 more appropriate tribute to his memory than that which ap- 

 peared in the Gateshead Observer of the 12th March, 1859, 

 by a kind and well informed friend of the deceased. I shall 

 therefore quote it. "Mr. Loftus," says the journalist, "who 

 very early exhibited a decided bent for geology, was educated 

 at Cambridge University, and there attracted the notice of Pro- 

 fessor Sedgwick, who proposed him as a Fellow of the Geologi- 

 cal Society; and afterwards, of Sir Henry Delabeche, through 

 whom he was appointed on the Turco-Persian Commission. 

 The deceased spent four years (from 1849 to 1852), in Asia 

 Minor and Assyria, being under the command of Major General 

 Sir W. Fenwick Williams, of Kars (then Colonel Williams), 

 when that distinguished soldier, on behalf of England, acted 

 with the commissioners named by the Emperor of Eussia in the 

 settlement of the frontier between Turkey and Persia. The 

 opportunities thus presented by a residence in a land little trod- 

 den before by the foot of the European, were not neglected by 

 Mr. Loftus, whose researches in the sphere of Rawlinson and 

 Layard were attended by equally brilliant results. The success 

 which rewarded his archaeological explorations in the mounds 

 which entomb the departed cities of the East, led to his being 

 sent out in 1853, by the Assyrian Society, on a second expedi- 

 tion, to still further prosecute his researches, the fruits whereof 

 were subsequently published by Mr. Loftus in a most interesting 

 volume, embellished with engravings of the sculptures and cunei- 

 form inscriptions of Babylonia, Chaldea, and Susiana. Four 

 of these extraordinary inscribed and sculptured stones (a gift 

 from Mr. Loftus,) have lately been placed in the vestibule of the 

 Literary and PhilosojDliical Society of Newcastle (the museum 

 of the Natural History Society, of which he was for some time 



