Original Members 5 



Dr. Allen Thomson, then Treasurer. It also mentions those 

 of them who had died or resigned membership. 



That List also gives in addition the names of the 

 members with the date of their election, beginning with 

 the original 47, who are grouped as present at the first 

 meeting, or announced at the second and third meetings, 

 together with those who had been subsequently elected 

 down to 1880. The dates of resignation or decease are 

 also entered (in most cases). 



It is hoped these short biographical sketches of the founders 

 of the Club, all of whom have, of course, passed away, may 

 interest readers. Some of them did not attain till after 

 7 the positions indicated by the prefixes to their names. 



PROFESSOR DAVID THOMAS AXSTED, the first in alphabetical order 

 of the original forty -seven, was bom in London in 1814, and went 

 to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. After 

 some years' study of geology he became a professor of that subject 

 at King's College, London, and from 1844 to 1847 was Assistant- 

 Secretary to the Geological Society, being elected a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society in 1844. He then became much occupied in practical 

 work, such as water supply, and for some years was resident at 

 Impington, near Cambridge, dying at Woodbridge, Suffolk, in 1880. 

 He wrote many papers and books on geology, which met with 

 considerable success. 



SIR FRANCIS BEAUFORT, the hydrographer, was born in 1774 at 

 Xavan, County Meath, of which place his father, a topographer of 

 some distinction, was rector. In 1787 he entered the Royal Navy, 

 and his ship took part in Lord Howe's victory on June ist, 1794. In 

 1800 he was one of a boat's crew which cut out a Spanish battle- 

 ship from under the guns of a fort near Malaga, and received nine- 

 teen wounds, sixteen from musket shots and three sword cuts, 

 winning promotion to commander. In 1805 he surveyed the mouth 

 of the Rio de la Plata, and, after convoy duty on the coast of Spain, 

 became post-captain in 1810 and surveyed the coast of Karamania; 

 afterwards publishing an account of it and the adjoining part of 

 Asia Minor. He was badly wounded in a boat attack by Turkish 

 pirates, and had to return to England, where he drew with his 

 own hand the charts of his survey. In 1829 he w r as appointed 

 hydrographer to the navy, and among the valuable results of his 

 twenty-six years' tenure of office were the scale of wind-force and 

 the tabular system of weather registration. Promoted to rear- 

 admiral in 1846, he was created K.C.B. two years later, and died 

 on Dec. i7th, 1857. 



