Annual Report of the Council. xxxv 



science. In 1868 Playfair first entered Parliament and sat in 

 the Commons till he was raised to the Peerage in 1892. 



In 1844 Playfair began his official work for the Government 

 by serving on the Royal Commission on the sanitary condition 

 of large towns. He was special commissioner for the 185 1 

 Exhibition ; then one of the joint secretaries of the Science and 

 Art Department which grew out of the Exhibition, and Inspector- 

 General of Government Museums and Schools of Science. 



The most important scientific work published by Playfair was 

 that done in collaboration with Joule on " Atomic Volumes," 

 and his papers on "Catalytic Action " and "The Nitro-prussides." 

 He himself used to declare that the greatest discovery in pure 

 science that he had made was the discovery of Frankland and 

 Dewar. But Playfair brought science to bear on many important 

 practical problems, and the position taken to-day by science and 

 scientific men in England is largely due to Playfair's activity and 

 influence. 



He was elected an Honorary Member of this Society on 

 April 29, 1851, and his death occurred in London, on May 29, 

 1898. H. B. D. 



OsBERT Salvin, F.R.S., who died on the ist of June, 

 1898, at his home, Hawksfold, near Haslemere, in Sussex, 

 was born at Finchley in 1835, and was the second and only 

 surviving son of the late Mr. Anthony Salvin, the well-known 

 architect. Shortly after graduating at Cambridge as Senior 

 Optime in the Mathematical Tripos of 1857, he made a Natural 

 History Expedition to Tunis and Algeria, in the company of 

 Mr. W. H. Hudleston and Canon Tristram, both of whom 

 survive him. In the autumn of the same year he made the 

 first expedition to Guatemala, a country with which his life's 

 work was to be largely associated, where he stayed chiefly in 

 company with the late Mr. G. U. Skinner, the well-known 

 collector of orchids, till the middle of 1858, revisiting the same 

 region in about a year, and for a third time in 1861, in company 

 with his friend and future coadjutor, Mr, F. D. Godman. After 



