1788 Joseph Black ; John Sibthorp 185 



Kingdom at the Club's table this year. By far the most 

 eminent of them in science was Dr. Black, the President's 

 guest on 7th August, if we may believe the guest to have been 

 the illustrious Professor of Chemistry in the University of 

 Edinburgh, a great original discoverer and one of the 

 founders of modern Chemistry, who was linked also with the 

 earliest stages of Geology in this country, as the helpful 

 and sagacious friend and counsellor of Hutton and Playfair. 

 Among the other names on the register of the meetings 

 occur those of the Earl of Fife, the Earl of Glasgow, Sir 

 Henry Englefield, Sir Thomas Dundas and other visitors 

 who had previously dined with the Club. Of those who came 

 for the first time one of the most interesting was Dr. John 

 Sibthorp, if we may identify the person so named with the 

 eminent botanist, son and successor of the Professor of 

 Botany at Cambridge. Before this time he had been much 

 in the eastern part of the Mediterranean basin, studying 

 the flora of the islands and the coasts of the mainland 

 regions which he revisited in later years. He published a 

 Flora of Oxford and left the MS. of a Prodromus to the Flora 

 of Greece which was issued after his death. He was elected 

 into the Royal Society on 6th March of this year. He died 

 in 1796 at the early age of thirty-eight. 



