WELLINGTON PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



First Meeting. Qth August, 1873. 

 James Hector, M.D., F.R.S., President, in the cliair. 



New members. — Charles W. Purnell, Thomas Lewis, Charles Rous Marten, 

 F.R.a.S., F.M.S., W. S. Moorhouse, Hugh Calders, Wilson Heaps, George 

 Michell Nation, G. H. Wilson. 



Various publications received since last meeting were laid on the table, 

 and a list of the principal donations lately added to the Colonial Museum was 

 read. 



The retiring President delivered the following anniversary 



ADDRESS. 



Before proceeding to the business of the evening I have to announce to the 

 Society the loss of one of its most active and zealous members, through the 

 recent death of Dr. Frederick Knox, at the ripe age of 82. More than half a 

 century ago Dr. Knox was the assistant and friend of some of the leading 

 anatomists of that day. As curator of the Museum of the College of 

 Surgeons in Edinburgh, and as assistant to Dr. Barclay, he was chiefly 

 instrumental in producing that magnificent collection of anatomical 

 preparations, illustrative of the various forms of animal life, which is known as 

 the Barcleian Museum. Upon the retirement of Dr. Barclay from the Cljair 

 of Anatomy, in 1824, he became assistant to his brother, the eminent and 

 bi-illiant lecturer on comparative anatomy, and continued to be curator of the 

 Museum imtil he emigrated to this colony in 1840. During his career in 

 the old country he effected many discoveries in anatomy, and especially 

 in connection with his favourite branch of study — the Cetacea ; and, in his 

 later days, he frequently had just cause to complain that many of his 

 early discoveries, disputed or neglected at the time they were made, had 

 been since appropriated by subsequent writers. Since the foundation of the 

 New Zealand Society, of which he was one of the original members, he has 

 taken a lively interest in its proceedings, and there have been but few meetings 

 at which some anatomical preparation, evincing his characteristic skill and 

 industry, has not been exhibited as a new addition to the Museum. His last 

 contributions were the skeletons of the male and female elephant fish, which 



