Royal Society. 1 .'*!) 



bilities of life. Mr. Morgan was the nephew of the celebrated Dr. 

 Price, whose memoirs he has written, and some of whose works he 

 has edited ; and he partook largely, at one period at least, of some 

 of the political and financial opinions of that ardent character, par- 

 ticularly relating to the dangers of a national bankruptcy from the 

 rapid increase of our National Debt. He was appointed early in 

 life, chiefly by his uncle's influence and recommendation, to the situ- 

 ation of Actuary of the Equitable Assurance Company, which he 

 continued to hold for nearly sixty years ; and the unexampled wealth 

 and prosperity of that great establishment may be in a great degree 

 attributed to the confidence inspired by the correct principles of cal- 

 culation and of management which he introduced : and though he 

 was exposed towards the close of life to many attacks and much 

 opposition, in consequence of his too rigid adherence to a system 

 which might be calculated to do injustice to some classes of insurers, 

 yet no small indulgence is due even to the prejudices of a man who 

 had done so much service to society, by establishing upon a firm 

 basis the security of establishments which act as safeguards against 

 the fluctuations and vicissitudes of life, and which thus encourage 

 habits of providence and of foresight amongst the higher and middle 

 classes of the community. 



Mr. Thomas Allan, an eminent citizen of Edinburgh, was the 

 author of a work on Mineralogical Nomenclature, and of several pa- 

 pers on geology and mineralogy in the Transactions of the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh, and elsewhere. He was greatly distinguished 

 for his accurate knowledge of mineral species and their varieties, 

 and of all the delicate and minute distinctions of external characters 

 by which they are separated from each other ; and his collection of 

 minerals has been justly celebrated for its great extent and perfect 

 arrangement. In the year 1812 he joined Sir George Steuart Mac- 

 kenzie in an Excursion to the Faroe Islands, where he greatly enriched 

 his collection, particularly in zeolites. This expedition was under- 

 taken for the purpose of ascertaining whether, in a Trap Country, 

 where no traces of external volcanoes existed, anything similar to 

 the peculiar features of the rocks of Iceland was to be found : and 

 his Account of the Mineralogy of these Islands, in which his object 

 has been to describe, without relation to theory, whatever appeared 

 to him interesting in a geological point of view, was read before 

 the Royal Society of Edinburgh in the beginning of the following 

 year, and printed in the seventh volume of their Transactions. He 

 adopted in early life the opinions of Dr. Hutton, though his papers 

 on some points in geology in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and 

 in the environs of Nice, show him to have been an accurate and 

 an unprejudiced observer. He was a person of active habits and 

 character, a liberal supporter of public charities and useful institu- 

 tions, and an ardent and even enthusiastic friend of all the schemes 

 for the improvement and decoration of his own magnificent and pic- 

 turesque metropolis. 



Db. William BabwGTON was a distinguished physician in the City 

 of London. He was formerly a lecturer on materia medica and on 



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