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comparative obscurity by the growth and progress of her vigorous 
nursling. Yet though geology now seeks more various and savoury 
food from other quarters, she can never cease to look back with 
regard and gratitude to the lap in which she first sat, and the hands 
that supplied her early wants. And our warm acknowledgments 
must on all due occasions be paid to those who zealously cultivated 
mineralogy, when geology, as we now understand the term, hardly 
existed; and who, when the nobler and more expansive science 
came before them, freely and gladly transferred to that their zeal 
and their munificence. 
The spirit which prevailed in the infancy of this Society, and to 
which the Society owed its permanent existence, was one which did 
not shrink from difficulties and sacrifices; and among the persons 
who were animated by this spirit Sir Abraham Hume was eminent ; 
his purse and his exertions being always at the service of the body. 
He gave his labours also to the Society by taking the office of Vice- 
President, which he discharged with diligence from 1809 to 1813. 
He died in March last at the great age of ninety, being then the 
oldest person both in this and in the Royal Society. 
Mr. Benjamin Bevan was a civil engineer, and throughout his life 
showed a great love of science, and considerable power of promo- 
ting its purposes. He instituted various researches, theoretical and 
practical, on the strength of materials; and it was he who first 
proved by experiment the curious proposition, that the Modulus of 
Elasticity of water and of ice is the same. In 182] he wrote a 
letter to the secretary of this Society, recommending that the form 
of the surface of this country should be determined by barometri- 
cal measurements of the heights of a great number of points in it,— 
the barometer which was to be used as a standard being kept in 
London. Mr. Bevan and Mr. Webster were commissioned to pro- 
cure a barometer, and Dr. Wollaston recommended one of Carey’s 
barometers, but it does not appear that any further steps were 
taken. I may remark that recent researches have further con- 
firmed the wisdom of Mr. Bevan’s suggestion, that heights should 
be measured, as all other measurements are made, from some fixed 
conventional standard, instead of incurring the vagueness and in- 
consistency which result from assuming the existence of a natural 
standard, such as the level of the sea. 
