636 



Mr. Owen, 



It gives me great satisfaction to announce that the Council has 

 awarded one of the Royal Medals to you for your very excellent 

 paper on the Belemnite. It is a communication of the highest in- 

 terest, at the same time to the geologist and the palaeontologist. 

 It describes and explains the nature of an extinct animal, one por« 

 tion of whose frame is found largely existing in different strata, 

 while very slight indications of the remainder of its structure had 

 been known to the world till a very recent period. It adds to our 

 satisfaction, as an English Society, that the ample account of this 

 animal, given to us by your anatomical skill and experience, is de- 

 rived from remarkable specimens, hitherto at least found in En- 

 gland alone. Their discovery has been owing to the formation of 

 the Great Western Railway. In this instance, therefore, and pro- 

 bably in many future ones, this gigantic instrument, the child of 

 modern engineering genius, is not only the means of rapid loco- 

 motion to the traveller, but also carries forward with accelerated 

 speed the progress of physical science itself. 



I trust, Mr. Owen, that the Royal Society will have many future 

 occasions for gratitude to you for interesting additions to the Phi- 

 losophical Transactions. 



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

 Members. 



John Bostock, M.D., has long occupied a distinguished station 

 among the zealous cultivators of Animal Chemistry, Physiology, 

 and other branches of Medical Science. His father had been esta- 

 blished as physician at Liverpool, and from his great talents would 

 probably have risen to considerable eminence, had not these brilliant 

 prospects been doomed to sudden extinction by an untimely death, 

 before he had attained the age of thirty. He left an only child, the 

 subject of the present notice, who was born in 1774, the year pre- 

 ceding that fatal event, and whose early education was conducted 

 at the New College at Hackney, at the time when Dr. Priestley was 

 delivering lectures on chemistry. Having imbibed, under such able 

 tuition, an ardent love of science, young Bostock was led to make 

 choice of medicine as his profession. He studied at Edinburgh, 

 where he graduated in the year 1798, and soon afterwards com- 

 menced practice in his native town. The activity of his mind was 

 there displayed, not only in numerous contributions to most of the 

 medical and scientific journals, but also in the prominent part w hich 

 he took in planning and establishing various charitable, scientific 

 and literary institutions, and more particularly the Fever Hospital, 

 and the Botanic Garden ; and also the Philosophical and Literary 

 Institution of Liverpool, where, in the capacity of Professor of Phy- 

 siology, he delivered the first course of lectures there given. 



Plaving secured a competent fortune. Dr. Bostock determined, in 

 1817> to relinquish his profession and fix his residence in London, 

 where he could possess more extensive means of prosecuting his 



