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Mr. Astronomer Royal, 



It is now my duty to announce to 3'ou that a Royal Medal has 

 been adjudged to you by the Council for your important inquiry 

 into the Tides on the Coast of Ireland. It is a great gratification to 

 me to give a medal, conferred by his sovereign, to one to whom is 

 committed the charge of the great scientific establishment of En- 

 gland, for investigations carried on with consummate scientific abi- 

 lity, connected with the mighty element on which his country has 

 reaped so much glory, and to which she owes so much of her wealth 

 and of her safety. If the day of necessity should ever arrive, I 

 doubt not that her sons will emulate the achievements of their pre- 

 decessors. Now, in the happier times of peace, it is gratifying to 

 see British skill and British science gathering bloodless, but unperish- 

 ing laurels on the same field, and by so doing ministering with no 

 unselfish hand to the safety of all who pursue the avocations of 

 commerce. 



Mr. Beck, 



A Royal Medal has been adjudged to you by the Council of the 

 Royal Society, complying thereby with the recommendation of the 

 Committee of Physiology, for your researches into one of the most 

 important subjects of anatomical inquiry*. In presenting it to you, 



* The report of the Committee of Physiology on the claims of Mr. Beck's 

 paper to the award of the Medal, is as follows : — 



''The paper of Mr. Beck contains the result of an elaborate anatomical 

 investigation of the Nerves of the Uterus, together with observations on 

 the structure and connexions of the sympathetic nerve. 



*'By his researches the author has cleared up various points concerning 

 the nerves of the uterus which have hitherto been doubtful or misunder- 

 stood. He has determined more precisely than heretofore the source and 

 mode of distribution of these nerves, and the real extent to which the organ 

 is supplied with them. The true nature of the nervous ganglia at the neck 

 of the uterus, and of the plexuses formed by the sympathetic and sacral 

 nerves in the sanje situation, is also satisfactorily made out, as well as the 

 fact that the branches derived from the sacral nerves are not destined for 

 the uterus, but are distributed to adjacent organs. 



"With regard to the sympathetic nerve, it is shown that there are both 

 grey and white separate branches of communication between that nerve and 

 the spinal nerves. This important fact has, it is true, been already pointed 

 out in the recently published work of Todd and Bowman, but the author 

 of the paper has nevertheless the merit of arriving at it independently, by 

 his own observations. He has further shown that the white and grey con- 

 stituents of the nerve keep distinct from each other, not only in the so- 

 called trunk of the sympathetic, but also in its primary branches, as far as 

 the visceral ganglia, beyond which the white and grey parts become inter- 

 mixed in the nerves distributed to the viscera. The precise mode of con- 

 nexion of the white and grey communicating branches with the spinal 

 nerves is also carefully investigated. These observations appear important 

 as tending to throw light on the constitution of the sympathetic nerve and 

 its relation to the rest of the nervous system. 



"The Committee consider the paper of Mr. Beck as a most valuable 

 contribution to the Anatomy of the nervous system, and as affording addi- 



