ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. SY 
THE ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT, 
J. W. Huuxz, Ese., F.R.S. 
GENTLEMEN, 
A custom dating, I believe, from the foundation of the Society, 
imposes on me the sad yet salutary obligation of beginning my 
address with a reference to the losses our ranks have sustained by 
death during the official year now closing. Although our losses of 
Fellows have been numerous, I find in the obituary list one only 
who had ever communicated a ‘‘ paper.” I allude to Dr. McClelland, 
who, in 1827, contributed a paper ‘‘On the Natural History of 
Upper Assam where the Tea-plant grows wild;” and it is from the 
rolls of Foreign Members and Correspondents that we miss long- 
familar names. 
On the 27th September, at Lausanne, at the ripe age of 74 years, 
died Prof. Oswatp HreEr, whose long and zealous devotion to the study 
of fossil plants, pursued during the greater part of a long life under 
the adverse circumstances of slender means, ill health, and great 
physical weakness, could not fail to secure admiration and respect. 
His intimate personal friends tell of his extreme amiability and of his 
sympathetic nature. In early life he was a very successful student 
of entomology, in which he even in later years took a keen interest ; 
but he will be best remembered as one of the foremost pioneers in 
Paleo-botany,in which difficult branch of research he acquired a wider 
than European reputation. The estimation in which the Society held 
him was testified by the award to him of the Wollaston Fund in 
1862, of the Murchison Fund 1 in 1873, and of the Murchison Medal 
in the following year. 
In October the Society lost another of its Foreign Members, 
Joacutm BarranveE, who died on the 5th of that month at Frohsdorf, 
in Austria, whither he had been called some months previously by 
the fatal illness of his former pupil, the Comte de Chambord. Exiled 
from his native land, his attention was early directed to the collection 
and study of the Paleozoic fossils of Bohemia, his adopted country. 
His colossal work, the ‘ Systéme Silurien de la Bohéme,’ of which no 
fewer than 22 volumes had been published at the time of his decease, 
and a large number of separate papers, bear witness to his un- 
flagging industry, his singleness of purpose, and his critical acumen, 
the possession of which alone made possible so great an undertaking. 
Barrande has left to the city of Prague his unrivalled collection of 
fossils, and considerable funds for its maintenance and for the com- 
pletion of the ‘Systeme.’ Our Society marked its high estimation of 
his labours by awarding to him, in 1851, the Balance of the Wollaston 
Fund, the diploma of Foreign Membership in 1854, and the Wol- 
laston Medal in 1855. 
VOL. XL. é 
