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The late Professor Edward Forbes. 



We need not now endeavour to give expression to a grief so 

 deeply felt and universally diffused, as that occasioned by the 

 sudden and disastrous death of this distinguished naturalist. 

 Ours is the loss, and, we doubt not, his the gain. The disad- 

 vantages, both of a personal nature to his private friends, and 

 of a more public kind to the community at large, are inex- 

 pressible and irremediable. If all hearts are still saddened 

 by this heavy and unlooked-for calamity, — if even those who 

 knew him not, or had but a faint idea of his surpassing powers, 

 — are impressed with so deep a sense of this bereavement, — 

 how much more must it weigh down the spirits, almost deaden 

 the hopes, of those who were associated in his labours, but 

 who felt their labours lightened by their rejoicing confidence 

 in such a companion and coadjutor. Viewing the loss as 

 amounting to a national misfortune, not to be measured merely 

 by the sudden sorrow produced among ourselves by its unex- 

 pected occurrence, amid the first upraising of so many fresh 

 and sanguine hopes, we shall not dwell upon its great disad- 

 vantage to this Journal, the management of which he was 

 about to undertake, with all his well-known and unfailing- 

 zeal, as Editor of the Natural History department, in its va- 

 rious branches. 



As it might truly be said of Professor Edward Forbes " nil 

 tetigit quod non ornavit," so, under his fostering care and skil- 

 ful hand, whatever of barren and unfruitful might have un- 

 avoidably crept in upon our management of later years would 

 have been corrected or expelled, and new life and vigour in- 

 terfused. But having been honoured with his confidence, we 

 shall consider the increased responsibilities thrown upon us 

 by his disastrous death, as so many pledges to the Public, 

 that this Journal, to which he so fondly desired to devote him- 

 self, shall be conducted, if not with the same talent, at least 

 in the same tone and temper, as distinguished every procedure 

 of him whom we deplore. 



We shall here present a brief and most inadequate record 



