1 IO 



NA TURE 



\J)ec. 4, ii 



side of chemistry — I mean Dr. Angus Smith, whose official 

 labours in favour of pure air and pure water combined both tact 

 and zeal, and were productive of highly beneficial results. 



One other chemist has been taken from among us, Mr. 

 Henry Watts, the well-known editor of the " Dictionary of 

 Chemistry," and of more than one issue of "Fownes's Manual." 



Our other losses extend over various departments of science. 

 In botany our ranks are thinned by the death of Dr. John 

 Hutton Balfour, formerly Professor of Botany at Glasgow and 

 the Emeritus Professor of that Chair in the University of 

 Edinburgh ; and of the veteran Mr. George Bentham, who had 

 nearly completed his eighty-fourth year. During his long and 

 varied experiences of life, botany was his constant pursuit and 

 study ; and some thirty years ago, after presenting his fine col- 

 lections and library to the Royal Gardens at Kew, he devoted 

 himself to labouring there on the Floras of Hong Kong and 

 Australia, and in conjunction with Sir Joseph Hooker, on the 

 " Genera Plantarum," until his health gave way in the spring of 

 last year. The exceptional value of his botanical work was 

 recognised by this Society in 1859, when a Royal Medal was 

 awarded to him, and his regard for the Society has been testified 

 by his making a bequest of 1000/. to our Scientific Relief Fund. 



Among mathematicians we have lost Dr. Isaac Todhunter, 

 whose educational treatises have for many years been recognised 

 as standard works, and whose elaborate histories of different 

 branches of mathematical science have earned for him a high 

 reputation ; and Mr. Charles W. Merrifield, who, in addition 

 to achieving distinction by his educational works on arithmetic 

 and mathematics, did much in the direction of the practical 

 application of science, and at the Royal School of Naval 

 Architecture and Marine Engineering successfully laboured in 

 improving the stability and the sea-going powers of the British 

 Navy. 



Another distinguished mathematician whom we have within 

 the last few weeks had the misfortune to lose, was the Rev. 

 Richard Townsend, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the 

 University of Dublin, whose labours in the more abstruse fields 

 of geometrical speculation extended over a period of nearly 

 forty years. Mr. James Rennie was also a votary of mathematical 

 research. 



Among practical men of science, the veteran Mr. Charles 

 Manby, who for forty-five years had been Secretary or Honorary 

 Secretary of the Institution of Civil Engineers, will deservedly 

 '(•Jce a high place. 



The anatomical and physiological labours of Prof. Allen 

 Thomson had extended over the longer term of fifty-four years, 

 and few possessed the power of clearer exposition than he, while 

 for acts of personal kindness there must be many besides myself 

 who owe hiai a deep debt of gratitude. 



Among others connected with the medical profession we miss 

 the distinguished surgeon Mr. Cssar Hawkins, Dr. Alexander 

 Tweedie, and Sir Erasmus Wilson, whose name will long sur- 

 vive, not only in connection with dermatology and the Chair of 

 Pathological Anatomy at Aberdeen, but with the Egyptian 

 obelisk, known as Cleopatra's Needle, the presence of which in 

 London is entirely due to his liberality. 



In Mr. R. A. C. Godwin-Austen we have lost one who for 

 nearly fifty years had ranked among the foremost of English 

 geologists. His manifold observations will be recorded else- 

 where, but as an instance of his critical powers, I may mention 

 his now classical paper on the possible extension of the Coal 

 Measures beneath the south-eastern part of England, read in 

 1S55, his speculations in which as to the western extension of 

 the axis of Artois, all recent deep borings within the 1 

 Basin have so fully substantiated. 



In Dr. Wright we have lost an accomplished palaeontologist 

 whose knowledge of the fossil Echinodermata and Ammonitidse 

 was almost unrivalled. 



The Duke of Buccleuch had for fifty years been one of our 

 Fellows, and in 1867 occupied the position of President of the 

 British Association; while Sir Bartle Frere, although an ethno- 

 logist and geographer, will probably be better known as an able 

 and energetic public servant and administrator than as a man of 

 science. 



In common with the nation at large, we have to deplore the 

 untimely and unexpected decease of another distinguished states- 

 man, the late Postmaster-General, Mr. Fawcett. A man of 

 rare mental powers, the effect upon him of the greatest of all 

 physical deprivations, the loss of sight, was only to make him 

 rise superior to his misfortune. As a student of political economy 



he attained a high reputation, and he turned his mastery of the 

 subject to good account when he entered into the sphere of 

 public life towards which his natural aspirations led him. 1 1 is 

 singleness and honesty of purpose, the inborn justice of his well- 

 balanced mind, his devotion to the public good, and his invariable 

 courtesy, endeared him alike to political friends and opponents ; 

 while to those who were brought into more immediate contact 

 with him, his truly sympathetic nature, and the marvellous 

 memory which preserved even minute details of former conver- 

 sations, gave a charm to his intercourse which none who enjoyed 

 it will ever forget. 



As I have already observed, our losses on the home list, 

 including one resignation of Fellowship and one removal from 

 our list, are less than in many former years, being altogether 21 

 in number; we have, on the other hand, elected 16 Fellows, 

 including one Privy Councillor. It would, however, appear 

 that our numbers are gradually attaining to something like a 

 state of equilibrium, and that if our elections continue to be 

 limited as at present, the roll of the Society will remain at its 

 present standard of about 470 Fellows. Looking at the recog- 

 nised longevity of scientific men and the age at which many now 

 achieve the distinction of being elected into the Society, it seems 

 to me not improbable that our numbers will ere long show a 

 tendency to increase rather than to diminish. 



Of the Philosophical Transactions three parts, and of the 

 Proceedings eleven numbers, have been published; while the 

 number of papers received during the past year was 100, as 

 compared with 103 in the previous year. Of these the most 

 numerous have been in the departments of electricity and 

 magnetism, though physics and mathematics, chemistry, minera- 

 logy, anatomy, and physiology, botany, and morphology have all 

 had their share. 



It is hardly within my province to select any papers that we 

 have published as being the most worthy of mention. The mere 

 fact that they have appeared in the Philosophical Transactions is 

 a sufficient voucher for their value. I may, however, call atten- 

 tion to the report of Captain Abney and Dr. Schuster, our 

 Bakerian Lecturer for the present year, on the total solar eclipse 

 of May 17, 1SS2, which is the outcome of an expedition towards 

 which a grant of 350/. was made from our Donation Fund. 

 Some of the results were mentioned by Mr. Spottiswoode in his 

 Presidential Address of 1S82, but the value of the details with 

 regard to the corona, and the success which attended the efforts 

 of the photographers, can only be estimated from an examination 

 of the paper itself. The detailed results obtained by the photo- 

 graphers wdio accompanied the American expedition to Caroline 

 Island in the South Pacific in order to observe the solar eclipse 

 of May 5, 18S3, have not yet been brought before the Society. 



In respect to biological studies, our record of the past year, 

 though it does not contain the announcement of any very startling 

 results, gives evidence of fruitful activity along various lines of 

 research. 



In Botany, Mr. Gardiner has continued his observations on the 

 important subject of the continuity of protoplasm in vegetable 

 cells, which was referred to in the President's Address of last 

 year ; he has also brought forward some interesting results de- 

 rived from an examination of the changes in the gland-cells of 

 Dionrea, which serve still further to illustrate the identity of the 

 fundamental physiological processes in plants and animals. Mr. 

 Bower has dealt with the morphology of the leaf in certain 

 plants, in a memoir both valuable in itself, and noteworthy 

 because hitherto the study of abstract vegetable morphology has 

 perhaps not obtained in this country the attention which it 

 deserves, and which has been given to it in other countries, 

 especially in Germany. 



In Physiology two important papers have been presented on 

 the difficult subject of the functions of the cerebral convolutions, 

 one by Drs. Ferrier and Yeo, and the other by Prof. Schafer and 

 Mr. Horsley. Both contain observations which demand careful 

 consideration by all physiologists. 



The results of the study of animal forms which is happily 

 being carried on with great activity, I may say, all over the 

 United Kingdom, are for various reasons principally recorded 

 elsewhere than in the pages of the Transactions or Proceedings 

 of this Society. Nevertheless, this subject has also been fairly 

 represented at our meetings. Our distinguished and unwearied 

 Fellow. Prof. YV. Kitchen Parker, is still continuing his elabor- 

 ate and valuable researches on the vertebrate skull ; and during 

 the past session the Society has had the pleasure of receiving 

 several short papers, expounded in person by their author, from 



