212 CENTENARY OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



research. Though he did not, as it had been too rashly said, tear 

 down the curtain which obscured our gaze and lay bare the birth of 

 life, he had lifted the veil here and there and given us glimpses 

 which would light the path of those who followed in his steps, and, 

 more than this, he showed by his life and by his work the true 

 methods by which alone the secrets of nature may be won. 



Mr. Thiselton Dyer delivered the eulogy on George Bentham, 

 whose friendship he had enjoyed. A nephew of Jeremy Bentham, 

 he was early imbued with a taste for methodizing and analyzing, 

 and through his mother's fondness for plants and the attraction 

 which their classification had for him! he was led to study them 

 with marvellous results. He was President of the Linnean Society 

 from 1863 to 1874, and in his devotion to its interests, which knew 

 no bounds, he shrank from no labour. He stood in the footsteps of 

 Linnaeus ; and, although the descent was oblique, he inherited the 

 mantle of the master whose memory was that day commemorated. 



After the proposal of votes of thanks to the writers of these 

 addresses, a very interesting ceremony took place. 



The President explained that it had been determined to estab- 

 lish a Linnean Gold Medal to be presented in subsequent years 

 alternately to a botanist and a zoologist ; but on this occasion two 

 were to be presented, and there had not been any question in the 

 council as to who the first recipients were to be. The medal had on 

 one side a portrait of Linnaeus, taken from the bust in the room, 

 and on the reverse the arms of the Society surrounded by the 

 Linnaa borealis. The President first made the presentation to 



and then, after a a 

 Sir Joseph Hooker. 



and 



annual 



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the President being supported by Sir John Lubbock, Sir Joseph 

 Hooker, Prof. Flower, Prof. P. M. Duncan, and Mr. St. George 



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Mivart 



memory 



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having 



been duly honoured, Prof. Duncan proposed " The health of the 

 Linnean Medallists," Sir Eichard Owen and Sir Joseph Hooker. 

 He recalled the time more than forty years ago when, as one of a 

 band of noisy medical students, he sat upon the gallery of the 

 Boyal College of Surgeons and saw a wonderful company of men, 

 including judges, bishops, lawyers, and medical men, assembled to 

 hear the marvellous lectures of Prof. Owen in his prime, charac- 

 terized by fine delivery, wonderful powers of description, and grand 

 generalization. To him he owed his love of natural history. F° r 

 long his name had been synonymous with British science to ^ast 

 numbers of people wherever science was esteemed. To him the 

 medical profession owed much of its modern development through 

 its greatly increased interest in physiological science. As regarded 

 Sir Joseph Hooker he could not refrain from mentioning his 

 exquisite Himalayan journals as among the two or three most 

 charming books of travel and science in the language. Sir Joseph 



