70 Royal Society, 



relates to a black colouring matter occasionally found in the bronchial 

 glands, But Dr. Pearson has still further claims on our respect 

 and our regard. For a series of years he continued to diffuse, by his 

 lectures, a knowledge of the new chemistry, instructing hundreds in 

 the truths of science, as they became successively developed, in a 

 manner not calculated to load the memory, but to invigorate the rea- 

 soning powers, in proportion as new facts were communicated and 

 arranged. And to Dr. Pearson we are again indebted for rendering 

 fiimiliar in England the nomenclature of chemistry, fir-^t adopted in 

 another country ; an adaptation of words to things, of which it may 

 be truly said, 



"Oj av Bihri TO. ovoiiara., sicxrai xoct roc Ttpccyij.ara.. 

 A medium of communication adapting its plastic nature to the recep- 

 tion of new facts, and of new arrangements, owing, perhaps, their ex- 

 istence to the facilities of this universal language. 



One individual it still remains for me to notice, and with deep re- 

 gret ; for, considering the number and the value of his communications, 

 together with the pre-eminence of the science on which his energies 

 were employed, it may fairly be said that no greater loss has been 

 sustained by the Society within the period to which we refer, than it 

 has experienced by the death of Professor Woodhouse. We have 

 from him seven different papers, — four on abstract and profound ma- 

 thematical speculations ; the last three on subjects connected with 

 the recently established Observatory at Cambridge. Born with strong 

 abilities, and with a predisposition for the investigation and the ac- 

 quirement of abstract truth, Mr. Robert Woodhouse cultivated ma- 

 thematics with great assiduity, and with a corresponding success. 

 Having attained the highest academical honours, he mainly contri- 

 buted, by his writings in our Transactions, by various separate pub- 

 lications, by his example, and by the influence of his official situation 

 in the University — towards paying that tiue homage to Newton 

 which has, of late, been rendered to him, in the very focus of his 

 glory, — not by servilely adhering to methods or to forms, the devising 

 of which by one man will always continue the wonder of the human 

 race 5— but by doing as Nbwton himself would have been most eager 

 to do ; that is, by raising still higher the edifices of which he has laid 

 the solid, the everlasting foundations. And sure I am that Mr. Wood- 

 house would acce])t as the most gratifying tributes to his memory, the 

 appointment and the exertions of such a successor as the distinguish- 

 ed person (whom I would willingly enumerate as one of us) now ac- 

 tually engaged in carrying towards perfection these matters, of which 

 the commencements only were permitted to himself. 



And here I would call your attention to the loss sustained by the 

 world at large, in the person of another philosopher and Fellow of 

 this Society, although not a contributor to our annual publications — 

 Mr. Dugald Stewart, imbued with a taste for mathematical learning 

 bv his father's eminence in that department of knowledge, has done 

 more than almost any one of his contemporaries towards freeing from 

 mvstery and j)aradoxes the science which should naturally be of all 

 the most clear and precise. Following the steps of Bacon and of 



Locke, 



