136 Presidentship of 'Sir John Pringle 1776 



1776. At the General Meeting on July 25, 1776, which 

 was attended by twenty members, with Sir John Pringle in 

 the Chair, the Treasurer reported that the expenses for the 

 past year amounted to 3 ios., which included 2 8s. for 

 deficiencies in attendance, leaving a balance against the Club 

 of i 6s. id. He announced the death of Josiah Colebrooke. 

 He stated also that the Hon. Daines Barrington and Josiaji 

 Warner had not attended the Society for more than a year. 

 Three vacancies were accordingly declared and these were 

 filled up by the election of the Rev. Richard Kaye, Rev. 

 Michael Lort and Dr. Patrick Russell. 



Dr. Kaye, afterwards a baronet, and Dean of Lincoln, 

 was elected into the Royal Society in 1765. 



The Rev. Michael Lort, B.D., became F.R.S. in 1766. 

 He was an accomplished antiquary, and as Senior Fellow 

 of Trinity College, and Regius Professor of Greek at Cam- 

 bridge, he held an important position in the University life 

 of the day. He was appointed Prebendary of St. Paul's 

 in 1780. 



Dr. Patrick Russell was not F.R.S. at the time of his 

 election into the Club, and he did not attain that position 

 until 27th November 1777. Born in Edinburgh and re- 

 ceiving there a medical education he went out to the East 

 as a young man, became physician to the English factory 

 at Aleppo, where he succeeded his brother (ante, p. 79). 

 After making important observations on the plague he 

 returned to this country in 1772 and settled in London 

 as a physician. In 1781 he again went to the East, and in 

 November 1785 was appointed botanist or naturalist to 

 the East India Company in the Carnatic, where he made 

 large natural history collections. In 1791 he published 

 an important " Treatise on the Plague " in two quarto 

 volumes. Five years later he began the publication of a 

 large folio work on Indian Serpents, and he likewise pub- 

 lished two folio volumes of descriptions and figures of two 

 hundred fishes collected by him in Vizagapatam. After his 

 return to the East India Company's service in 1781, when 

 he found that his stay abroad would be prolonged, he desired 



