Miscellanies. 3^19 



short notices of each. We find among the fellows the names of 

 John, Duke of Bedford, who was not only a most munificent pat- 

 ron of botanical science, but an author of several splendid works ; 

 of William Cristy, Esq., an excellent botanist and universally be- 

 loved, who was removed at an early age ; of Allan Cunningham, the 

 celebi-ated traveller and botanist, who, after the melancholy death of 

 his brother Richard, was appointed to succeed him as colonial botanist 

 at New South Wales, where he died in about a year after his arrival ; 

 Davies Gilbert, Esq., late President of the Royal Society, aged 73 ; 

 Rev. Patrick Keith, the well known physiological botanist, aged 71. 

 Among the foreign members we find the name of Don Mariano La- 

 gasca, of Spain, a distinguished botanist, who had spent many years 

 in England, having been obliged to take refuge there at the over- 

 throw of the constitutional government in 1822: also the profound 

 John Frederick Blumenhach, so long a celebrated name in anatomy 

 and physiology ; he was Professor of Medicine in the University of 

 Gdttingen, where he died on the 22d of January last, at the advanced 

 age of 88 : also, Baron Jacquin, of Vienna, Professor of Botany and 

 Chemistry in the University, and Director of the Botanic Garden of 

 Vienna, which situations he has held for many years, having succeeded 

 his celebrated father ; he published the Eclogce. Plantarum, in the 

 same style with the large and splendid series of works of the elder 

 Jacquin. 



From another source we learn that natural science has recently 

 sustained another severe loss, in the death of Pro/. Meyen, of Berlin, 

 the distinguished vegetable anatomist. The November number of 

 the Annals of Natural History announces the death of Prof. Wieg- 

 mann, also of the University of Berlin, a well known zoologist, and 

 the editor of the Archiv fur Naturgeschichte, in which Prof. Meyen's 

 smaller memoirs have generally appeared. The same journal also 

 announces the decease of Mr. Vigors, the distinguished English or- 

 nithologist. 



Dr. Buckland, in his anniversary address, Feb. 21, 1840, before the 

 Geological Society of London, continues the melancholy catalogue. 

 Mr. William Smith, of Scarborough, England, aged 71, after a few 

 days illness, in August, 1839, on his way to the meeting of the British 

 Association at Birmingham. He was justly styled the father of Eng- 

 lish geology, since to his discoveries we owe the first diflusion of ex- 

 act knowledge as to the order "of superposition of the secondary for- 

 mations which occupy so large a portion of that island, and the first 

 demonstration of that constancy of the organic remains, which he 

 proved to be characteristic of the component strata of each difierent 

 formation. It was the especial merit of Mr. William Smith to estab- 



