io6 



NA TURE 



[December 2, 1897 



THE ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE 

 ROYAL SOCIETY. 



'X'UESDAY last being St. Andrew's Day, the anniversary 

 meeting of the Royal Society was held in their apartments 

 at Burlington House. The auditors of the Treasurer's accounts 

 having read their report, and the Secretary having read the list 

 of Fellows elected and deceased since the last anniversary, the 

 President (Lord Lister) proceeded to deliver the anniversary 

 address. The medals were then presented. 



The Society next proceeded to elect the officers and council 

 for the ensuing year. The following is a list of those elected : — 

 President ; Lord Lister. Treasurer : Sir John Evans, K.C. B. 

 Secretaries : Prof. Michael Foster, Prof. Arthur William 

 Riicker. Foreign Secretary : Sir Edward Frankland, K.C.B. 

 Other Members of the Council : Prof. William Grylls Adams, 

 Prof. Thomas Clifford Allbutt Sir Robert Stawell Ball, Rev. 

 Thomas George Bonney, Prof. John Cleland, Prof. Robert 

 Bellamy Clifton, Prof. James Alfred Ewing, Mr. Alfred Bray 

 Kempe, Dr. John Newport Langley, Dr. Joseph Larmor, Prof. 

 Nevil Story Maskelyne, Prof. Raphael Meldola. Prof. Edward 

 Bagnall Poulton, Dr. William James Russell, Dr. Dukinfield 

 Henry Scott, Prof. Walter Frank Raphael Weldon. 



The following is the address of the President : — 



Since the last anniversary meeting fifteen Fellows and six 

 Foreign Meinbers have passed away. 



The deceased Fellows are — 



Edward Ballard, January 19, 1897, aged 76. 



Charles Tomlinson, February 15, 1897, aged 89. 



Samuel James Augustus Salter, March 1897, aged 72. 



James Joseph Sylvester, March 15, 1897, aged 83. 



Edward James Stone, May 9, 1897, aged 66. 



Major- Cjeneral Robert Mann Parsons, May 20, 1897, aged 68. 



Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, May 21, 1897, aged 72. 



Sir John Charles Bucknill, July 19, 1897, aged 79. 



Right Hon. Anthony John Mundella, July 21, 1897, aged 72. 



William Archer, August 14, 1897, ^g^d 65. 



Lieu tenant-General Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois, 

 August 17, 1897, aged 76. 



John Braxton Hicks, August 28, 1897, aged 74. 



Charles Smait Roy, October 4, 1897, aged 43. 



James Hey wood, October 17, 1897, aged 87. 



Rev. Samuel Haughton, October 31, 1897, aged 76. 



The Foreign Members are — 



Emil Heinrich du Bois Reymond, December 26, 1896, 

 aged 79. 



Carl Weierstrass, February 20, 1897, aged 82. 



Alfred Louis Olivier Des Cloiseaux, May 8, 1897, aged 79. 



Julius von Sachs, May 29, 1897, aged 65. 



Johannes Japetus Smith Steenstrup, June 20, 1897, aged 84. 



Rudolph P. H. Heidenhain, October 1897, aged 63. 



Of these some seem to demand special notice from this Chair. 



In Sylvester, English mathematical science has lost one of 

 its best known and most gifted exponents. During his long 

 and active career he wrote several hundreds of memoirs on the 

 most refined and technical parts of pure mathematics. It is not 

 for me to attempt to enumerate even the most important of his 

 labours, which were as solid as they were brilliant. To quote 

 the words of one well qualified to judge, "originality, imagina- 

 tion, and enthusiasm were the ever present notes in the chords 

 which he struck with a master's hand ; and it may be safely 

 predicted that he will always find an honoured place in the 

 small roll which contains the names of the men who have been 

 pre-eminent in the science which he loved and to which he 

 devoted his life." 



Our Fellow for more than fifty years, he received the highest 

 recognition our Society can bestow, having been awarded a 

 Royal Medal in 1861, and the Copley Medal in 1880. No less 

 was he honoured by other countries, foreign scientific academies 

 having showered their distinctions upon him. Thus full of 

 honours, as of years, he died at the advanced age of eighty- 

 three. 



In Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks we have lost one of the 

 most distinguished archaeologists of this or any other country. 

 During a connection witti the British Museum extending over 

 a period of forty-five years, he practically founded the Depart- 

 ment of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography, 

 and its growth was in no small degree due to his private 

 liberality. 



NO. 1466, VOL. 57] 



In all that related to the subject of the antiquity of man, he 

 was one of our first authorities ; and the Christy collection of 

 which he was a trustee, and which is now incorporated with 

 the British Museum, assumed its present great importance under 

 his careful superintendence and through his generous aid. The 

 mediteval collections which he bequeathed to the nation testify 

 alike to his taste and judgment and to his rare munificence. 



The Rev. Dr. Haughton was a man of great intellectual 

 power and amazing versatility. He made original contribu- 

 tions, based often upon very laborious researches, to physics, 

 chemistry, geology, biology, and medicine, while continuing to 

 discharge from time to time the functions of a minister of the 

 gospel. If his many-sidedness prevented him from attaining 

 a high eminence in any one branch of science, it pre-eminently 

 fitted him for the place he was to fill in the government of a 

 large educational institution. 



After receiving his school education in his native town of 

 Carlow, he proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin, where, his 

 brilliant studentship having procured him a Fellowship at an un- 

 usually early age, he threw himself with great zeal into the 

 educational work of the University. As a boy he had been 

 fond of geology, and as a young man he so greatly distinguished 

 himself in it that at the age of thirty he was appointed to the 

 Geological chair in Trinity College. Here he found himself 

 unable to deal satisfactorily with iossil remains without a know- 

 ledge of comparative anatomy, and for this an acquaintance with 

 human anatomy seemed an essential preliminary. Thus he was 

 drawn to Medicine, for which indeed he had an early predilec- 

 tion ; and entering comparatively late in life on medical study, 

 he devoted himself to the entire curriculum with characteristic 

 energy. Soon after he had taken his medical degree, an 

 epidemic of cholera occurred in Dublin, and he sho\ved the 

 true spirit of a devotee of Medicine by placing himself at the 

 head of a band of medical students, to supply the want of any 

 adequate system of nursing. In this self-denying labour 

 Haughton bore more than his full share, and its beneficial results 

 left in his mind an abiding sense of the value of bedside work. 

 He was thus led to found medals for the encouragement of 

 clinical study ; and the last act of his life was, out of very 

 scanty savings, to provide for making those rewards more 

 substantial. 



In the course of his studentship he had been deeply impressed 

 with the abuses which then existed in the medical department of 

 Trinity College, and on becoming connected with the governing 

 body, he entered on the task of reform with indomitable courage ; 

 and it was mainly due to his exertions that the school was 

 raised from a comparatively subordinate position to the leading 

 place which it now holds. 



The high opinion entertained of him by his colleagues was 

 shown by the fact that he was for many years their representative 

 on the General Medical Council. He was of a most genial and 

 loyal nature, and it is said of him that, while he made many 

 friends, he never lost one. 



Edward Ballard was one of the chief promoters of the sanitary 

 science of the Victorian era. His researches into problems re- 

 garding public health, which extended over forty years, were 

 characterised by very remarkable far-sightedness and exactitude. 

 To him we are indebted for most of our certain knowledge on 

 the subject of effluvium nuisances in their relation to health, and 

 for the indication of trustworthy means of mitigating the 

 deleterious influences of noxious trades. He, too, was among 

 the first to insist on the importance of strict study of the a^tio- 

 logical relations of "sickness" and "mortality"; and by his 

 labours in this connection he laid a foundation for that system 

 of compulsory notification of infectious illness which is now 

 practically universal in this country. But Dr. Ballard's com- 

 pleted work in these and other directions by no means represents 

 the full measure of the value of his services to public health. 

 By his industry in the accumulation of facts bearing on a 

 number of unsolved problems, and his exposition of such facts 

 in their several connections, he has not only indicated lines of 

 further research, but has tended to lighten the lal)ours of those 

 who will come after him. He was a man of noble nature ; and 

 the devotion of his great abilities to the service of mankind was 

 utterly devoid of self-seeking. 



James Heywood was a man of considerable scientific attain- 

 ments, who deserves to be specially remembered on account of 

 his great services in the cause of university reform. He was 

 borri in 1 810 at Everton, Lancashire, and on leaving school at 

 Bristol, entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was 



