68 Annals of the Philosophical Club 



to say that he was born in Hesse on July isth, 1824, educated at 

 Marburg University, was appointed lecturer on chemistry at Queens- 

 wood College, Hants., in 1851, and elected F.R.S. in 1861. 



1875. On Jan. 28th, in a conversation about the number 

 of Fellows annually elected into the Royal Society, which 

 was begun by Mr. Gassiot expressing his opinion in favour 

 of the existing limitation, Sir W. Grove thought that, as 

 the question was now being considered by a Committee of 

 the Society, it would be inconvenient, until the facts were 

 better known, to pledge the Club to any conclusion, and 

 other members said that the present system had worked 

 well. 



At the Anniversary Meeting on April 27th, notice was 

 given that an alteration would be proposed in Rule 4 to 

 change the hour of dinner to 6.30 p.m. on ordinary meetings 

 and 7.0 on anniversaries. 



Mr. John Ball and Lord Rosse were elected into the 

 vacancies made by the deaths of Sir C. Lyell and Col. Yorke. 



JOHN BALL, the well-known Alpine traveller and botanist, was 

 the son of an Irish judge, born in Dublin on August 2oth, 1818, 

 and educated at Oscott and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he 

 was twenty-seventh wrangler. He early showed a love for natural 

 science and the Alps, for at the age of seven the view of that chain 

 from the Jura deeply affected him. After Cambridge he spent 

 four years in Continental travel, not forgetting the Alps and their 

 glaciers, and on his return was called to the Irish Bar. During the 

 famine he served on the Poor-Law Commission, till he entered Parlia- 

 ment in 1852. The loss of his seat, after six years, set him free 

 to study the Alps, and compile, between 1863 and 1868, the three 

 volumes of his excellent Alpine Guide. But in 1871 he joined 

 Sir J. D. Hooker in an expedition to the Great Atlas, and in 1882 

 visited South America, as described in his Notes of a Naturalist. 

 Elected F.R.S. in 1868, he made many contributions to botany 

 and geology, dying in London on Oct. 21, 1889. 



THE EARL OF ROSSE, who followed his father's steps in astrophysics, 

 and was perhaps even more ingenious as a scientific mechanician, 

 was born at Birr Castle on November ijth, 1840, and, after passing 

 through Trinity College, Dublin, succeeded to the title in 1867, 

 when he devoted much attention to the great nebula in Orion and 

 the radiation of heat from the moon, but also took an important 

 part in general business. He became Chancellor of Dublin University 

 in 1885, was elected F.R.S. in 1867, received honorary degrees and 



