ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXTU 



rungen des Rheinischen Schichten- Systems in Nassau,' is not ex- 

 ceeded, for the beaut}^ of its illustrations, by any work of the kind 

 which has appeared ; and, in common with one or two other Members 

 of this Society, I can add my testimony to the fidelity with which 

 the objects represented have been described and reproduced. Such 

 works as these necessarily involve a considerable expense to their 

 authors, — an expense which is often greatly disproportionate to the 

 slender endowments of foreign academical professorships. With 

 reference to what may be hoped from the future labours of the Messrs. 

 Sandberger, I may state that they belong to a band of young and 

 zealous brothers in science, whose object it is to investigate and 

 make known the Geological and Natural History of the Middle 

 Rhenish Provinces, and towards which they next purpose to con- 

 tribute a critical work on the fossil forms of the tertiary basin of 

 Mayence. 



THE ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 



Gentlemen, — It now becomes my duty, in accordance with the 

 practice uniformly adopted by my predecessors in this chair, to ad- 

 dress to you some observations on the losses we have sustained 

 during the past year, and it is with unfeigned sorrow that I have first 

 to allude to one whose name can never be mentioned in these rooms 

 without emotion. I need not say that I allude to Edward Forbes, 

 who was endeared to us by every tie of social friendship and scientific 

 merit, and who has been snatched away from us at the moment when 

 he had reached the highest position his ambition could have coveted, 

 or his admiring countrymen could have bestowed on him. Scarcely 

 had a few short months intervened since he had been called by the 

 universal voice of the science of Great Britain to fill the chair of 

 Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh, and 

 while we were still regretting his departure from the metropolis, before 

 we were astounded and overwhelmed by the unexpected announcement 

 of his death. We felt not only individually that we had lost a valued 

 friend, but that those anticipations of a brilliant scientific career, justi- 

 fied by the position he had attained and by the opportunities placed 

 within his reach, were doomed to bitter disappointment. These 

 reflections are most painful, and, were I to follow my own inclina- 

 tions, I would willingly forego all further allusion to the subject ; but 

 such a course would be a betrayal of duty towards our departed 

 friend, and would disappoint the justly-founded expectations which 

 you entertain of hearing a more detailed account of the distinguished 

 and amiable man whose loss we so deeply deplore. 



Edward Forbes was born in the Isle of Man, in the month of 

 February 1815. He evinced, at a very early age, an unusual taste 

 for the study of natural history, and began to form a small museum 

 when scarcely seven years old. A few years later he commenced his 

 geological studies with the perusal of Buckland's ' Reliquiae Dilu- 

 vianse,' Parkinson's * Organic Remains,' and Conybeare's * Geology 



