1873 N.S.Maskelyne; H.W.Blake; J.D. Hooker 407 



the Royal Institution. He was elected into the Royal 

 Society in 1857. 



Nevil Story Maskelyne (F.R.S. 1870), while a student at 

 Oxford, became much interested in the subjects taught by 

 Daubeny and Buckland, insomuch that, after having taken for 

 a time to law, he was glad to return to the University in 1850, 

 when Buckland proposed that Maskelyne should relieve him 

 of the mineralogical part of his wide subject. Though not 

 prepared by long practice for the task offered to him, he 

 accepted. Ultimately he was appointed Professor of Miner- 

 alogy at Oxford. He was also made Keeper of Minerals 

 at the British Museum, and held the two appointments 

 conjointly. With but little assistance he rearranged the 

 whole of the great collection of minerals at Bloomsbury. 

 He was one of the earliest of the mineralogists to take up 

 the study of minerals and rocks in thin sections under the 

 microscope with polarised light. He made a special study 

 of meteorites and detected in them some new minerals. 

 In 1880 he entered Parliament as member for Cricklade 

 and continued in that position for twelve years, when he 

 retired to lead the life of a country gentleman on his own 

 property, taking an active part in the business affairs of 

 his county. He died in 1911. 



Henry Wollaston Blake, educated at Trinity College, 

 Cambridge, became early in life a partner in the firm of 

 Boulton & Watt, of the Soho Foundry, Birmingham, which 

 had an extensive foreign connexion. He was one of the 

 original members of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 

 and for many years a Director of the Bank of England. He 

 was elected into the Royal Society in 1843. 



On the 30th November 1873 Sir George Airy resigned his 

 tenure of the Presidentship of the Royal Society, and Sir 

 Joseph Dalton Hooker was elected as his successor. Since 

 his first visit to the Club in 1839 th* 5 great botanist had risen 

 to high eminence in the science to which he had devoted 

 his life. Beginning as assistant-surgeon in the Erebus 

 under Captain Ross in 1839 ne obtained a mass of informa- 

 tion regarding the botany and geology of the unknown 



