180 Presidentship of Sir Joseph Banks 1787 



for the purpose of studying hospital management in this 

 country, he returned to France with much fresh knowledge 

 which would have enabled him to institute important reforms 

 in the hospitals of Paris. But the Revolution had broken 

 out. In 1793 he withdrew to a country-house which he had 

 in the village of Massy and devoted himself to serious research 

 in anatomy. Immersed in his studies and taking no heed 

 of public affairs, he was for a time afraid to accept 

 the honour of election (1795) into the Institut National, 

 which he feared was only another political club. When 

 the allied troops came in July 1815, the Russian soldiers 

 pillaged his library and collections. Thus driven back 

 to Paris he died there a few months later at the great 

 age of 92. 



On the 22nd November Dr. Blagden, carrying out one of 

 the agreeable functions of his office as Secretary of the 

 Royal Society, introduced to the Club a trio of distinguished 

 Frenchmen Jaques Dominique, Comte de Cassini, Adrien 

 Marie Legendre, and Pierre Francois Andre Mechain. The 

 Comte de Cassini, the son and grandson of astronomers, 

 carried on the renown of the family. He succeeded his 

 father as Director of the Paris Observatory and he completed 

 the great topographical map of France which his father 

 had begun. Born in 1747 he outlived the trials and terrors 

 of the Revolution, though he was arrested as a royalist 

 and brought before the revolutionary tribunal. He died in 

 1845 at the remarkable age of 98. He was elected into 

 the Royal Society on 3Oth April 1789, at the same time 

 as Laplace, Legendre, Mechain, and Berthollet. Mechain, 

 another noted French astronomer, first made his mark by 

 detecting a number of comets and calculating their orbits. 

 He was employed in measuring the portion of the terrestrial 

 meridian between Dunkirk and Barcelona. Having com- 

 pleted the task assigned to him he wished to continue the 

 measurement as far as the Balearic Isles, but on this journey 

 he was carried off by yellow fever. The third of the trio, 

 Legendre, one of the most eminent of the famous mathe- 

 maticians of France, had been associated with Cassini and 



