Non-Attendance Discussed 57 



readings of a barometer at his house at Ross (Monmouth) and of 

 the one at the Royal Society. He died Dec. I4th, 1874. 



On Nov. 27th, the vacancy caused by the death of Sir 

 B. Brodie was filled by the election of Dr. Thomas Thomson. 



He was born in Glasgow, where his father was a Professor of the 

 University, on Dec. 4th, 1817, and when only seventeen discovered 

 and described the fossil mollusca in the Clyde beds. Next he did 

 good work in chemistry, and then became engrossed hi botany. 

 After taking the degree of M.D., he went to India as assistant-surgeon 

 in the Company's service. Here he was sent to Ghuznee, and 

 when it fell was taken prisoner, but bribed his captor to convey 

 him with others to the British army of relief . He was thus enabled 

 to study the botany of the Sutlej region, after which bis duties as a 

 boundary commissioner between Kashmir and Tibet gave him the 

 opportunity of botanical work up to the crest of the Karakorams. 

 He spent 1850 in travelling with Sir J. D. Hooker in the Sikkim 

 forests, the Khasi Hills, and the neighbouring districts. Illness 

 sent him to England in 1851, but he returned in 1854, being made 

 F.R.S. next year, to be superintendent of the Botanic Gardens at 

 Calcutta. In 1861 bad health obliged him to resign. He spent the 

 rest of his life at Kew and at Maidstone, dying April i8th, 1878. 



1863. At the Anniversary Meeting, April 27th, Mr. Busk 

 was elected Treasurer, and a new rule was proposed, accord- 

 ing to which a member of the Club ceased to belong to it,, 

 if wholly absent from one anniversary to the next, though 

 capable of being restored, after the usual formalities, at 

 the next anniversary. The proposed rule, of which notice 

 had previously been given, was discussed, but not put to 

 the vote. 



1864. At the Anniversary Meeting, April 25th, the 

 vacancies caused by the resignations of Mr. Darwin, Dr. 

 Daubeny, and Dr. Lindley, and the deaths of Mr. L. Horner 

 and Col. Portlock, were filled by the election of Sir B. C. 

 Brodie, Sir G. Everest, Prof. J. C. Maxwell, Mr. Archibald 

 Smith, and Mr. J. J. Sylvester. 



SIR BENJAMIN COLLINS BRODIE, the younger, was born in London 

 in 1817, and went from Harrow to Balliol College, Oxford, where he 

 devoted himself to Natural Science, especially chemistry. His 

 papers on some of its more abstruse questions indicate well-devised 

 experiments and close reasoning. His studies of the allotropic 



