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February 25th, 1850. 



The REV. HUMPHREY LLOYD, D. D., President, 

 in the Chair. 



The Secretary read an Eulogium on the late Richard Kir- 

 wan, Esq., LL.D., by Dr. Pickells, of Cork. 



Mr. Kirwan had been educated for the Bar, and practised 

 for some time this honourable profession, but having unexpect- 

 edly succeeded to an ample patrimonial income by the death 

 of his elder brother, who was killed in a rencontre while in the 

 act of entering the Irish House of Commons, a new direction 

 was given to his views and energies, and thenceforward he 

 devoted himself in dignified retirement to the pursuits of 

 science. The sciences to which Mr. Kirwan more particularly 

 applied himself were chemistry, mineralogy, including geo- 

 logy, and meteorology ; and that his contributions to each of 

 these departments of natural knowledge were of the highest 

 importance cannot be doubted, although his name is not con- 

 nected with any of those transcendent or dazzling discoveries 

 which secure immortality for their author, and mark, as it 

 were, an era in the intellectual progress of the human race. 

 In chemistry his researches were numerous and valuable in a 

 high degree. By him, for the first time, the phenomena 

 usually referred to double elective aflSnity were studied with 

 accuracy and success, and the attention of chemists fixed upon 

 the antagonist forces, which he distinguished by the terms 

 Quiescent and Divellent. He even attempted to assign mea- 

 sures of the degree of the affinity between acids and bases, an 

 efi'ort which, had it been successful, would have raised che- 

 mistry to the rank of the more exact physical sciences, and have 

 brought its results within the domain of mathematical calcu- 

 lation. 



In an early communication to this Academy he explained 

 very accurate methods of determining the strength of the 



