576 



I may be allowed to express my hope that you will continue your 

 researches, and that others of your profession may be encouraged 

 to do so likewise, so that in the result our information may become 

 more perfect and full than we yet possess on points of very difficult 

 solution. 



I trust that the consequence of discoveries thus made will be a 

 diminution of those dangers, and an alleviation of those pains which 

 are the price paid for the entry ii|to the world of every human 

 being. 



The purpose for which the Royal Society was established was 

 indeed the improvement of natural knowledge for its own sake ; but 

 we can never forget that the privilege of acquiring that knowledge 

 entails the duty of employing it to the utmost of our power, not only 

 to the glory of Him who has given us our reasoning powers, but 

 also to the service, as far as may be, of those who are His creatures. 



Mr. OwEX, 



I have the pleasure of requesting you to transmit the Copley Me- 

 dal to your friend Mr. Schwann, for his valuable work on the Ana- 

 logies of Vegetables and Animals. This subject is one of the deepest 

 interest to the natural philosopher, for what can be more important 

 than to trace those analogies by which the two great kingdoms of 

 nature are united, and which show that the same wisdom has di- 

 rected every portion of the creation ? It is also a large and not easily 

 exhausted field of inquiry, and being so, I trust that he who has 

 already so ably cultivated it may reap from it still larger harvests 

 of scientific discovery. 



I now proceed to the biographical notices of some of our deceased 

 members. 



Dr. William Heberdex, the son of the eminent and accom- 

 plished author of the ' Commentaries on the History and Cure of 

 Diseases,' was born in London in the year 1767. At the early age 

 of seven, he v/as sent to school at the Charter House, and appears to 

 have there made rapid progress in the elementary branches of educa- 

 tion. His academical studies were pursued in St. John's College, 

 Cambridge, where he highly distinguished himself both by his ma- 

 thematical and his classical acquirements. Under his father's tuition 

 he applied himself with great diligence to his profession as a pupil 

 of St. George's Hospital, to which, at a subsequent period, he was 

 appointed one of the Physicians. He was elected a Fellow^ of this 

 Society in the year 1791 : and in 1797, became a Fellow of the 

 College of Physicians. His practice soon became tolerably exten- 

 sive. On the death of Sir George Baker in 1809, he succeeded him 



tional and more precise data for pli^rsiological reasoning respecting the 

 nerves to which it refers. On these grounds, as well as on account of the 

 consummate skill and devoted perseverance displayed by the author in his 

 arduous investigations, they have recommended that his paper be rewarded 

 with the RoyafMedal." 



