Royal Society. 67 



Although it is usual chiefly to dwell on the names of those 

 have enriched the Transactions by their communications, yet some 

 occur in the list now read, whom it is impossible to pass over with- 

 out notice. 



Mr. Archdeacon Cox, whose name will go down to posterity, as- 

 sociated with those of many illustrious persons whose histories he has 

 diligently investigated and adorned. 



Major Denham, whose active exertions, perseverance, and untimely 

 fate, can scarcely be contemplated without a tear. 



The Rev. Alexander Nicoli, Regius Professor of Hebrew in the 

 University of Oxford, — a man most eminent in the literary pursuit 

 he had selected, and advanced to the high station of Professor by the 

 disintere.Nted regard for merit of an individual still living, and who at 

 the time held the most confidential office in the government of this 

 country. Much certainly was expected from Mr. NicoU in the recon- 

 dite learning api)ropriate to his station ; and if the experience of past 

 diligence and acumen may be taken as an assurance of future active 

 exertion, these expectations would not have been di.sappointed. But 

 he is lost to us at an early age. 



Mr. William Phillips has not, indeed, appeared in the Philosophical 

 Transactions ; but his labours have assisted the inquiries of geolo- 

 gists and mineralogists in every part of the world. In English geo- 

 logy he contributed a joint share towards a work, unfortunately not 

 yet complete, but confessedly the most luminous and accurate that 

 has hitherto appeared. And in crystallography, those alone who have 

 made some progress in that most beautiful yet intricate science, are 

 capable of appreciating the extent of his merit. 



The first name that presents itself from the Transactions is that of 

 Mr. Mills, to whom we are indebted for a geological comm.unication 

 on the wyn dykes, and on the basalt of Scotland and Ireland, so long 

 ago as in the year 1790; at a period when that science, the distin- 

 guishing glory perhaps of the nineteenth century, had scarcely ac- 

 quired a distinct appellation in our language. 



Dr. John Mervin Nooth, elected in 1774, had favoured the Society 

 in the preceding year with some theoretical and practical observa- 

 tions on electricity, one of the sciences then most attractive of general 

 curiosity, in consequence of the wonderful discoveries recently made 

 by Dr. Franklin ; and in 1775, excited by the no less important ex- 

 periments of Dr. Priestley, he supplied our Transactions with the 

 description of an ingeniously contrived apparatus for saturating water 

 with carbonic acid, or, as that gaseous fluid was then called, with 

 fixed air. On the first discovery of carbonic acid as a distinct and 

 peculiar substance, followed by an analysis of its constituent parts, 

 great medical virtues were imputed to it, — much greater tlian subse- 

 quent experience has confirmed. Under these first impressions, the 

 instrument invented by Dr. Nooth was eagerly seized, and miglit be 

 seen in most private houses. The elegant pyramidal form of its three 

 parts ascending one above the other, and displaying by their trans- 

 parency the whole process as it goes on, is still exhibited by druggists 

 and by manufacturers of glass. Many gentlemen who now hear mc 



K 2 ' \vin 



