Presentation of the Royal Society Medals. 197 



ble of understanding the subject than I can pretend to be — by 

 men selected by the Council of the Royal Society for their 

 physiological science, who have felt the great value of the dis- 

 coveries you have made by accurate and diligent research, 

 aided by the skilful use of the microscope. I trust that the 

 avi^ard of this medal will encourage you to persevere in the 

 same course, aiid that future discoveries may add to your re- 

 putation and to that of the important profession to which you 

 belong. 



Mr Ivory — it is not the first time that you have been ad- 

 dressed from this chair, and it gives me great satisfaction to 

 follow the steps of my predecessors Sir Joseph Banks and Sir 

 H. Davy, by again bestowing a medal on one Avho is an honour 

 to the Royal Societ}^ and pre-eminently distinguished for his 

 mathematical attainments. The labours of your life are too 

 \vell kno^ra to the scientific world to require any eulogiura 

 from me, and I consider that, in this tribute to yom^ paper on 

 astronomical refraction, we are rather doing an honouj* to 

 ourselves than to you. 



Mr Brown — in conferring tlie Copley Medal on you for your 

 valuable discoveries on vegetable impregnations,* I am quite 

 sure that the voice of scientific Europe will respond to the 

 decision of the Council of the Royal Society. The Academie 

 des Sciences has already pronounced on your merits, as also 

 on those of Mr Ivory, by electing you, as well as that gentle- 

 man, to a seat among their foreign members ; and the Univer- 



passage through the Fallopian tube ; the earliest and most interesting stages 

 of development being for the first time described in this memoir. 



The ^•aluc of his very hiborious and extensi^•e series of minute obsers'ations 

 is greatly enhanced by the clearness and method with "which the results are 

 given, and by the comparisons, which the author's intimate acquaintance with 

 this branch of physiological literature has enabled him to institute, between 

 his own observatiojis and tliose of his predecessors in the same branch of 

 inquiiy. 



* The following are the discoveries referred to, viz. the organization of 

 the vegetable ovule, immediately before fecundation (published in 1826); 

 j;nd the direct action of the pollen, manifested by the c-ontaet established 

 between it and tliat point of the ovulunj where tlie embryo subsequently 

 first becomes visible, and published in papers, in the years 18U2 and 1833, 

 and communicated to the Linnean Societv. 



