1 1 



The name of Reynolds must, and, for various reasons, ever will 

 stand first on the list of those who have cultivated in this country the 

 whole extent of an art, the most refined, requiring talents the most 

 rare, and at the same time the most delightful of all that have sprung 

 from the human mind ; — but that of Lawrence will be hailed by the 

 Academy as their Spes altera, and their Decus gemellum. 



I am not aware of the loss of any Fellow of the Society on our 

 Foreign List. 



Gentlemen, 



Your Council for the past year have awarded one of the Royal 

 Medals to Dr. Brewster, for his various communications on Light, 

 printed in the last volume of your Transactions. 



Unable as we are to investigate the real essences of physical bodies, 

 it is impossible nicely to discriminate their relative importance by 

 observing the external or accidental properties they may assume : 

 but light is so preeminent in all its relations; as the cause of vision; 

 in the rapidity of its flight, or of its vibration ; in its connexion 

 with heat ; in its adorning everything in nature by a secondary 

 quality ; — that no more could be wanting to secure its place at the 

 head of that class of transcendant or imponderable substances, which 

 appear to animate the material world. 



Other properties have, however, been recently discovered, not less 

 wonderful than those that were previously known, and which promise 

 to decide the long-agitated question between corpuscular projection 

 and the vibration of a fluid at once inconceivably elastic and rare. 



In all these discoveries Dr. Brewster has taken an ample share. 

 And as a public testimony of the sense entertained by the Royal 

 Society of their importance, and of his ability and exertions, 1 have 

 the honour of presenting to him the Royal Medal. 



The discovery of any new elementary substance has ever been 

 deemed an occurrence worthy of being marked by some public de- 

 claration of applause. 



The ascertaining chlorine to be, in the actual state of our know- 

 ledge, one of this class, has justly been considered as among the 

 most brilliant of Sir Humphry Davy's achievements in chemical 

 science. Iodine has been added to the supporters of combustion, 

 occupying, like oxygen and chlorine, the negative extremity of the 

 scale in electro-chemistry. 



More recently another substance, apparently intermediate be- 

 tween chlorine and iodine, has been derived from the same source 

 as that yielding the latter, -—-from the water of the sea ; and from its 

 peculiar odour denominated brome, and subsequently bromine. An 

 ample account of the properties distinguishing the substance may 

 be found in a memoir by the discoverer, Mons. Balard of Montpelier, 

 read before the Academy of Sciences, published in the Annates de 

 Chimie, vol. xxxii.p. 337, and abridged in the twenty-second volume 

 of the Quarterly Journal of Science, p. 384. 



It will be seen by referring to the Second Fart of our Transactions 

 for the present year, that Dr. Daubeny has detected bromine in 



