ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. xli 



in leading to the formation of a museum at the India House, for the 

 reception of the most important portion of the immense collections of 

 Indian products, both raw and manufactured, which had been im- 

 ported for exhibition at the great Expositions, of London in 1851, 

 and Paris in 1855, by which the benefit and instruction to be derived 

 from their examination will be perpetuated. To perfect this noble 

 design Dr. Boyle devoted his utmost energies, and the very day before 

 his death, though still labouring under sickness, he attended at the 

 Museum to urge on the work ; but, alas ! it was his last effort, and, 

 suddenly cut off on the next day, the 2nd of January, 1858, in the 

 59th year of his age, the East India Company lost one who, whether 

 at home or abroad, had done more than most of its servants to pro- 

 mote its true interests, by rendering them essentially coincident with 

 those of mankind. 



Besides the works so often alluded to, Dr. Eoyle published many 

 other essays, either separately or in the Journals of learned societies, 

 principally botanical and bearing on the medical and commercial 

 products of plants ; and it may well be said that he was eminently a 

 scientific philanthropist. Besides his general connection with so 

 many of the most important Scientific Societies of London, he was a 

 Member of several Foreign Natural History Societies, amongst which 

 may be named the Academia Csesarea Naturae Curiosorum ; and for his 

 exertions in rendering the Indian Collection at the Paris Exhibition 

 in 1855 as perfect as possible, he was honoured by a first-class Jury 

 Medal, and by the insignia of an officer of the Legion of Honour. 



In reflecting on the last years of so distinguished a man, it must 

 be a great comfort to know that he was most happy in having mar- 

 ried a lady of highly cultivated mind, who, in the bitterness of her 

 sorrow at the loss of her husband, has the consolation of feeling that 

 she was the source of his greatest happiness, and a participator in 

 his intellectual labours. He has left, besides his widow, two sons 

 and a daughter to mourn his loss and venerate his memory; and 

 let me add, that their feelings will be shared by the numerous 

 friends to whom he was endeared by kindred feelings and by moral 

 worth. 



Of several of our lost members little information of any material 

 importance can be obtained, though they have all exhibited at some 

 period of their lives a strong desire to advance the progress of science. 

 Mr. Laveeack for example, while an undergraduate at Cambridge, 

 placed himself within the circle of attraction of Professor Sedgwick's 

 Lectures, and manifested a taste for geology by his close attendance 

 at the "Woodwardian Museum, then being put into order ; but it is 

 not known that he had any opportunity in after life of undertaking 

 original investigation. 



Mr. G. H. Satjndees likewise exhibited an early taste for geology, 

 and is known to the Society as having contributed a Sketch Map 

 intended to illustrate the position of a bed of fossil shells exposed to 

 view in a cutting of the Panama Eailway ; the specimens he had 



