Award of the Royal, Copley, and Rumf or d Medals. 61 



which you have also turned your acquaintance with Galvanism to 

 the most important practical purposes. 



Professou Daniell. 



In confiding to your charge, as our Foreign Secretary, the Rum- 

 ford Medal which the Council has awarded to M. Biot, I am sure 

 that every cultivator of the higher and more abstruse branches of 

 science will feel that it is bestowed on a philosopher, whose optical 

 researches on the curious and interesting subject of Polarized Light 

 are of the highest value. You may, at the same time that you for- 

 ward the Medal, assure M. Biot of the anxious wish of the Royal 

 Society that he may be long enabled to carry on inquiries so honour- 

 able to himself, and so important to more than one branch of 

 science. 



Professor Daniell, I hold in my hand, and deliver to you one of the 

 Copley Medals, which has been awarded by us to Professor Liebig. 

 My principal difficulty, in the present exercise of this the most 

 agreeable part of my official duty, is to know whether to consider 

 M. Liebig's inquiries as most important in a chemical or in a phy- 

 siological light. However that may be, he has a double claim on 

 the scientific world, enhanced by the practical and useful ends to 

 which he has turned his discoveries. I hope that he may long be 

 able to follow at the same time the paths of scientific research and 

 practical utility. 



Professor Daniell, I have again to call on you, in your official 

 capacity, to transmit a Medal to the Continent. The gentle- 

 man to whom we have adjudged it is M. Sturm, for his valu- 

 able mathematical labours, the fruits of which must be important, 

 not only to mathematics, but also to those other high and abstruse 

 sciences to whose advancement algebraical analysis is a necessary 

 instrument. In his solution, therefore, of a problem which has 

 baffled some of tlie greatest mathematicians that the world has pro- 

 duced, he has well earned the gratitude of every lover of natural 

 knowledge. 



You will. Gentlemen, hear read an account of the eminent men 

 connected with our Society whom we have had the misfortune to 

 lose since last November. Having confided the task of enumerating 

 tliem to one of your Members, more able than myself to do justice 

 to their merits, I shall not further toucii upon the subject tlian to 

 express my deep regret at the decease of one who had been my 

 predecessor in this Chair, and to whose counsel I might iiavc lookeil 

 for aid in any conjuncture of difficulty, with full reliance on his 

 good sense and ability, and also on his zeal in any matter in which 

 tlie interests of the Royal Society were at stake. I may also be per- 

 mitted to express the condolence of all the Mendjers of tlu^ Royal 

 Society witli tiie domestic affliction of our valued Treasurer by tlie 

 decease of his father, who was also one oi' our Fellows. I will now 

 desire Dr. Roget to read the account of those whom we now miss 

 from our ranks. 



'i'lu! first name in tlie list of our deceased Fellows, wliich it is my 

 melancholy duty to notice, is one which cannot be mentioned in this 



