The President's Address. 3,") 



immbers three hundred strong, yet Avithin the last year no 

 less than five of our members have been taken from us by the 

 unsparing hand of death. These are James Forbes Young, 

 Charles May, David Laing, P. W. Fry, and George Jackson ; 

 and of all the losses the Society has met with since 

 its formation, no greater one has happened than that of so 

 valuable a member as Mr. Jackson, for there is hardly one 

 amongst us who has used the microscope as a scientific 

 instrument, but has been more or less indebted to Mr. Jack- 

 son^s skill for the instrument employed in taking accurate 

 measurements of minute objects. 



Mr. George Jackson was the eldest son of a farmer at 

 Higher Yellington, in South Devon, and was born in 1792. 

 At an early age he exhibited a strong mechanical genius ; his 

 first attempts in that direction being to manufacture a mouse- 

 trap, his grandmother having promised him a guinea for the 

 first that was caught, under the impression that such a thing- 

 was impossible ; a mouse, however, was soon trapped, and the 

 promised guinea as quickly reduced to a half-crown. Then 

 sixpence a head was the price affixed ; but still, even at this 

 reduced rate, the money earned from the efficiency of the trap 

 was considered too much for so young an artist, and payments 

 consequently ceased altogether. He was educated at the 

 Ashburton Grammar School, whither his innate tendencies, 

 also followed him ; and if ever young Jackson was missing, he 

 was sure to be found in the workshop of Mr. Ireland, the 

 carpenter. Numerous lasting memorials of his skill, in the 

 form of writing-desks, work-boxes, &c., still remain to evidence 

 this early predilection. 



Mr. Jackson was articled to Mr. Gervis, a surgeon and 

 medical practitioner at Ashburton, whose sons had been his 

 schoolfellows, and whose second daughter he afterwards 

 married. He attended the lectures at the United Hospitals 

 of St. Thomas and Guy, and took the diploma of Member 

 of the Royal College of Surgeons of London in 1813. 



At an early period of his life he was an excellent manipu- 

 lator with the table blowpipe, and supplied himself and many 

 of his relatives and friends with most excellent thermometers, 

 hydrometers, and barometers. He also constructed a transit 

 instrument, which was erected, when in use, on a stone 

 cantilever firmly embedded into the wall behind his house. 

 In 1826, he was rewarded by the Society of Arts for an 

 ingenious and useful instantaneous light-apparatus, being a 

 modification of the hydrogen and spongy platinum lamp. 



Mr. Jackson was an early lover of the microscope, and many 

 years before the existence of our Society constructed a very 



