XXXVl PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



no prize, no reward to the scientific man worthy to be placed in com- 

 petition with that offered by the northern capitah Little did we 

 then imagine that the regret we felt at his departure from amongst 

 us was destined to be so soon merged in another, as overwhelming as 

 it was altogether unexpected. Little did we imagine that the fond 

 anticipations of a long and glorious career for our friend, in which 

 we then indulged, were doomed to be so speedily destroyed. 



Prof. Forbes was appointed to the vacant Chair of Natural History 

 in the University of Edinburgh. He had thus obtained the great 

 object of his life. An intimate friend, writing in one of the Edin- 

 burgh journals, says that he considered all his plans, excursions, 

 observations, &c., as preparatory to this one object. During his 

 active and laborious life, all his hopes and future plans pointed to 

 Edinburgh as the only appropriate place for developing that vast 

 amount of natural history acquirement he had obtained. There he 

 looked forward, amongst other things which his eager fancy had 

 prepared for him, to the formation of a magnificent museum, arranged 

 according to that system which for years he had been zealously ma- 

 turing. Nor can there be any doubt, but that with the liberal sup- 

 port of Government, assisted by that of private individuals, he would 

 have been enabled in a few years to carry out his plans. But alas ! 

 scarcely had he reached that goal which he had spent his whole life 

 in endeavouring to attain, and which he was anxiously preparing to 

 adorn with all the ornaments of science collected from every quarter 

 of the globe, when he was suddenly carried off by the inscrutable 

 decrees of Providence ; and the glorious fabric he had erected, — 

 that mental storehouse filled with the treasures of many years' col- 

 lecting, fell to pieces before our eyes, and nothing remained but the 

 broken fragments and the shattered scaffolding, to be again dispersed 

 and scattered, without system and without order, until they should 

 be again hereafter collected together with infinite labour and fatigue 

 by some future master-mind. 



The fate of Sir John Franklin has long been a mystery to his 

 countrymen : he has probably long ceased to be a member of this 

 Society. It is, however, only during the course of the past session 

 that any authentic inform.ation has reached this country that the 

 gallant explorer of the Arctic regions, with his adventurous followers, 

 had ceased to exist. Far from their ships, which, in the extremity of 

 danger and a hard struggle for life, they must have abandoned, and 

 after vainly endeavouring to reach a more southern and hospitable 

 region through a trackless desert, their remains were discovered by 

 travelling Esquimaux, from some of v/nom portions of their property 

 were obtained. These were rescued by the intrepid Dr. Rae, who had 

 gone in search of them overland, and who brought back the melan- 

 choly certitude of their fate. Their bones now lie whitening on the 

 Arctic shore, or beneath fields of eternal snow. By what means 

 they reached that spot, or how they perished, will probably never be 

 known ; but their memories will ever be cherished as of men who 

 risked and sacrificed their lives in the performance of duty and of 



