ANNIVEE3AET ADDEESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 43 



THE ANNIYEESAEY ADDRESS OE THE PRESIDENT, 



W. T. Blaneoed, LL.D., E.R.S. 



Gentlemen, 



In accordance with the customary practice, I shall commence 

 this Address with brief notices of some of the members of our 

 Society who have died during the past twelve months. Our 

 losses from the list of Ordinary Fellows have not been exceptional, 

 though we miss several valued and familiar names from our roll, 

 but some of our most distinguished Eoreign Members and Corre- 

 spondents have gone from amongst us. Among others, we have 

 to deplore the decease in the same year of the father of the Society, 

 the V'enerable Archdeacon B. Philpot, who joined our body in 1821, 

 five years before it was incorporated by charter, and of our senior 

 Eoreign Member, Dr. H. v. Dechen, who was elected in 1827. 

 There is no reasonable doubt that Archdeacon Philpot and Dr. H. v. 

 Dechen were the two senior members of the Society; a few 

 names still remaining on the list, with earlier dates of election, are 

 so retained for want of information, there being no reason to 

 suppose that such names represent living Eellows. 



The Yenerable Archdeacon B. Philpot, to whom I have already 

 referred as the *' father " of the Society, passed away in May last^ 

 at the advanced age of 98. He was born at Laxfi.eld in Suffolk, on 

 January 9th, 1791, and took his degree at Christ's College, Cam- 

 bridge in 1813. He joined this Society in 1821. By Archdeacon 

 Philpot's death, Mr. John Murray, of Albemarle Street, who was 

 elected in 1828, becomes the senior Eellow of the Society. 



Bobeet Damon, of Weymouth, Dorset, who was born in 1814, 

 and died May 4th, 1889, became a Eellow of this Society in 1864. 

 As a large dealer in fossils, minerals, recent shells, and similar 

 objects, and as an agent for the sale of collections of natural 

 history, Mr. Damon must have been known to most British 

 geologists, by whom he was greatly respected. He was a man of 

 much energy ; he travelled extensively ; and to his exertions the 

 British Museum is indebted for several valuable specimens, one of 

 those most recently procured from him by that institution being 

 the skeleton of i^Ay^mct. Mr. Damon's principal service to geolo- 

 gical science, apart from his activity in collecting, was the publi- 



