ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXVll 



soldiers, a proposition which led to the formation and instruction of 

 three companies of Royal Sappers and Miners expressly for that duty. 

 The instructions for this work drawn up by General Colby exhibit a 

 remarkable combination of enlarged principles and minute details ; 

 and the result of their application, after the first difficulties conse- 

 quent on the employment of so many newly-formed surveyors had 

 been overcome, was the most perfect success. In 1846, when the 

 Irish Survey may be said to have been completed in all its practical 

 objects, General Colby, on his promotion to the rank of Major- 

 General, was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel Hall of the Royal 

 Engineers in the charge of a work with which General Colby had 

 been connected for more than forty years. As regards the Geological 

 Society, General Colby has many claims upon its attention. He was 

 one of its earliest members ; he advocated warmly the project, first 

 suggested by Playfair, of combining a mineralogical survey with the 

 topographical one, which led to the appointment of Dr. M'Culloch 

 in connection vrith the triangulation of Scotland, and therefore to his 

 geological, or, more properly, mineralogical, examination of that 

 country. He gave his opinion, when consulted by the Master 

 General of the Ordnance, decidedly in favour of the publication, by 

 the Ordnance, of Sir Henry de la Beche's geological inquiries in 

 Devon and Cornwall, — a work from which has sprung the present 

 great National Geological Survey ; and he even anticipated that work 

 by commencing in Ireland a Geological Survey, comprising likewise 

 researches into the antiquities, statistics, and natural history of that . 

 country ; his original report in 1824, on the proper objects of a Survey, 

 having laid down the philosophical principle that a great topographi- 

 cal survey was the natural and proper basis for all those collateral 

 inquiries into the mineral and other resources of a country on which 

 its prosperity must so materially depend. As a man. General Colby 

 was remarkable for great simplicity of character, and for a generous 

 disposition which led him too often to neglect the means of ensuring 

 his own fame, whUst he was alsvays prompt in setting forth the merits 

 of those who served with, and acted under him. He was cordially 

 hospitable to his officers, most affectionate to his family, and to his 

 poorer fellow-creatures unostentatiously charitable. 



Dr. Thomas Thomson was born on the 12th of April, 1773, at 

 Crief. He received a good classical education at the Borough School 

 at Stirling, and afterwards obtained a Scholarship at St. Andrews in 

 1787, which entitl'^d him to board and lodging in that University 

 for three years, la 1795 he went to Edinburgh for the purpose of 

 prosecuting his medical studies, and there attended the chemical 

 lectures of Dr. Black, and laid the foundations of his future emi- 

 nence as a chemist. He graduated in 1799. After having lectured 

 on chemistry for some years in Edinburgh, he was appointed Lec- 

 turer in Chemistry in the University of Glasgow, and in the follow- 

 ing year the Lectureship was converted into a Regius Professorship, 

 which he held during the remainder of his life. He died on the 2nd 

 of July last, in the 80th year of his age. 



