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tingen, under the able chemist Friedrich Von Stromeyer, to whom 

 he dedicated his Elements of Chemistry; a work which has had, as 

 it well deserves, a very wide circulation among students. 



In William Parish, B.D., Jacksonian Professor of Natural and 

 Experimental Philosophy in the University of Cambridge, the Society 

 has lost an honorary member, elected as such soon after its original 

 foundation, namely in November 1808, and one of a number of our 

 countrymen who were at that period placed upon the honorary list. 

 Professor Parish never employed himself peculiarly in geological pur- 

 suits as we now understand the term ; but it is to be recollected, 

 that within a few years of the date of his election, which I have men- 

 tioned, the investigation of the earth's structure made a rapid progress, 

 and, in consequence, assumed a more fixed and technical form. Pro- 

 fessor Parish's scientific studies were mainly directed to the arts, 

 manufactures, and machinery of the empire ; on these subjects he 

 delivered courses of lectures full of interest and instruction ; and he 

 was thus led to describe our mines, and the mode of working them. 



But no reference to particular portions of Professor Parish's labours 

 can convey a just notion of the impulse which he gave to the progress 

 of scientific knowledge within his own sphere of influence, by the habit 

 of seizing, with an active and vivid apprehension, upon prominent parts 

 ©f modem science, and conveying them, in a manner singularly clear 

 and simple, to his audience. Por a long course of years his lectures 

 were more efiicacious than any other circumstance in stimulating the 

 minds of men in his university to philosophical thought on physical 

 subjects ; and to this day these lectures are never mentioned by those 

 who attended them at that period, without admiration and pleasure. 

 His merit was well recognised by the university in which he spent 

 his life. He received the highest mathematical honours of that body 

 on taking his degree of B. A. in 1778, was elected Professor of Che- 

 mistry in 1794, and Jacksonian Professor in 1813; and at the insti- 

 tution of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in Nov. 1819, he 

 was its first president. 



I cannot refrain from adding, that although I have here to speak 

 of him principally as a man of science, such pursuits were in his case 

 little more than episodes, in a life the main action of which was di- 

 rected to the ends of religion and benevolence. In his duties, as a 

 minister of Christianity, he was most zealous and indefatigable ; and 



