68 lloyal Society. 



will share in the surprise which I felt on learning that the inventor of 

 an apparatus familiar to my childhood, should have lived to be com- 

 memorated in the present year. 



We have next to notice a gentleman elected some short time prior 

 to Dr. Nooth, about fifty-five years ago, known to our Transactions, 

 indeed, by a single paper on antiquarian philology, but well known 

 to the Society by the aljle discharge of the duties attached to one of 

 its most important offices for a space of twenty-eight years. Mr. 

 Planta was chosen a fellow in 1774; he became secretary in 1776, 

 and continued to execute that office with great ability and diligence 

 up to 1804. It is needless for me to dilate on his merits as principal 

 librarian at the British Museum, — they are universally felt and ac- 

 knowledged. 



Dr. Sir James Edward Smith is known in every country and in 

 every place over the whole civilized world, where natural history is 

 cultivated as a science. Dr. Smith, having added to the usual accom- 

 plishments of a polite scholar an extensive acquaintance with bo- 

 tany, took, at an early period of his life, the decisive step of ac- 

 quiring the Herbarium of the great Linnaeus, augmented by his son. 

 The purchase was made in Sweden, after the government of that 

 country had declined to buy, at a moderate price, the most precious 

 relict of its most distinguished subject ; and, by so doing, to rescue 

 from difficulties those in whose welfare this illustrious reformer of na- 

 tural history had been most nearly interested. Dr. Smith embarked 

 his acquisition, and after escaping a danger the last to be apprehend- 

 ed, and which, from respect to a country of literature and of science, 

 I shall not describe, the collection was landed in England, where full 

 security and protection afforded the proprietor leisure for making that 

 use of the collection which has so amply established his fame. Soon 

 afterwards. Dr. Sir Edward Smith most fortunately employed himself 

 in kindling a separate light from the illustrious body I have now the 

 honour to address ; and several others having since followed in a si- 

 milar manner, they are now spreading a brilliant illumination over 

 the whole horizon of science ; while, so far from obscuring, they con- 

 tinue to increase the lustre of their parent flame. What, therefore, 

 this distinguished naturalist has done for the Linnaean Society, we 

 may in some degree consider as done for ourselves. We have one 

 ingenious communication in our Transactions for the year 1788, on 

 the irritability of vegetables. Not satisfied with discharging the du- 

 ties incident to the presidency of his own Society, and with investi- 

 gating and verifying the Linnaean specimens, by comparing them with 

 recent plants, \vith otlier dried specimens, with figures, and with de- 

 scriptions, his time and attention have been also employed in editing 

 one of the most splendid works ever published in this country, the 

 Flora Grseca of Dr. Sibthorpe. For various smaller works on the phi- 

 losophy of natural history, on the natural orders, &c. we are indebted 

 to his pen. And, to close a life of literature and science like that of 

 Dr. Sir James Smith, the last volume of his English Botany (a work 

 of great accuracy and merit) appeared in London on the very day 

 that proved to its author the termination of his mortal career ; not of 



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