The President having directed the senior Secretary to read the 

 Statutes for the election of Fellows, Sir Charles Lemon, Bart., and 

 Mr. Wheatstone, were, with the consent of the meeting, appointed 

 Scrutators. Mr. A. J. Stephens then moved that the meeting do 

 now adjourn. The motion was seconded by Dr. John Lee, but on 

 being put to the question was declared to be lost. 



The election was then proceeded with, when the votes of the Fel- 

 lows present having been collected, the folio v/ing gentlemen were 

 declared to have been duly elected : — ■ 



George Bishop, Esq, 

 Rev. James Challis. 

 Henry Clerk, Capt. R.E. 

 Wilham Fergusson, Esq. 

 Robert Were Fox, Esq. 

 Henry James, Capt. R.E. 

 Robert Gordon Latham, M.D. 



John Henry Lefroy, Capt. R.A. 



James Ormiston M'William, M.D. 



Thomas Oldham, Esq. 



Lyon Playfair, Ph.D. 



Robert Porrett, Esq. 



John Stenhouse, Ph.D. 



Allen Thomson, M.D. 



The thanks of the Society were voted to the Scrutators, and the^ 

 meeting adjourned. 



November 16, 1848. 



The MARQUIS OF NORTHAMPTON, President, in the Chair. 



The time of the Meeting was occupied in reading the Minutes of 

 the last Ordinary Meeting and of the General Meeting. 



November 23, 1848. 



GEORGE RENNIE, Esq., Treasurer, in the Chair. 



On the Chemical Nature of Wax." — Part III. " On Myricine." 

 By B. C. Brcdie, Esq. Communicated by Sir B. C. Brodie, Bart, 

 F.R.S. 



This paper is the last of three papers on the chemical nature of 

 wax, and contains the investigation of that portion of bees -wax 

 which is soluble only with difficulty in boiling alcohol. This body 

 could never be rightly investigated before the discovery of the true 

 nature of the other constituent of the wax, namely, the cerotic acid, 

 for the absence of which no test was known, and the products of the 

 decomposition of which would materially interfere with any experi- 

 ments on the nature of the myricine. When the cerotic acid has been 

 absolutely removed by repeated boiling of the wax with alcohol, a sub- 

 stance remains, which is saponifiable, but with difficulty. From the 

 products of saponification the author isolated palmitic acid, C32 H32 O4, 

 and a new wax- alcohol, analogous to, but yet different from cerotine, 

 described in a former paper. This alcohol, melissine, has the formula 



