145 



of promise with respect to the future state and fortunes both of 

 science and its cultivators. 



It becomes my duty now to advert to the heavy and severe losses 

 which the Society has sustained during the last year, including, I 

 regret to say, many celebrated names, more particularly in our 

 foreign list. I shall begin, however, with the mention of those names 

 upon our home list, whose labours in the cause of literature or of 

 science, appear to entitle them to particular notice. 



Sir Everard Home, Bart. , was born at Hull on the 6th of May 1756. 

 He was the youngest son of Robert Home, a surgeon in the army, 

 and descended from the Barons of Polwarth, the ancestors of the Earls 

 of Marchmont in Scotland : he was educated at Westminster School, 

 and though elected off as a scholar to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 

 1773, he never went there, having abandoned his prospects in college 

 upon the invitation of the celebrated John Hunter, who had recently 

 married his eldest sister, and who offered to superintend his educa- 

 tion in surgery and human and comparative anatomy, and gave him 

 the free use of his unrivalled collections. Under his auspices he con- 

 tinued to study for several years, availing himself at the same time 

 of the lectures and instructions of the most eminent anatomical and 

 medical teachers of his day. He went to the West Indies upon the 

 medical staff in 1780, where he remained for four years; upon his 

 return to England in 1784, he continued to assist Mr. Hunter in 

 the arrangement and completion of his museum, and also in his 

 various official duties until his death, which took place in 1793. 

 Mr. Home was elected a Fellow of this Society in 1785 ; in 1808 he 

 was made sergeant-surgeon to the King, and in the same year he re- 

 ceived the Copley Medal for his various papers on Anatomy and 

 Physiology, printed in the Philosophical Transactions. In 1812 

 he was created a baronet, being the first surgeon in actual practice 

 upon whom that honour had been conferred. 



In 1821 he was appointed surgeon to Chelsea Hospital, and in 

 the following year he was elected President of the College of Sur- 

 geons. In the year 1827 he began to retire from the practice of 

 his profession, and from most of his official employments; and he 

 died at his residence in Chelsea College in August last, in the 77th 

 year of his age. 



Sir Everard Home was the author of 107 papers in the Transac- 

 tions of this Society, a number exceeding that of any other contri- 

 butor. He published Lectures upon Comparative Anatomy, in six 

 volumes quarto ; the two first in 1814, the third and fourth in 1823, 

 and the two last in 1828. They consist chiefly of the results of his 

 papers in the Transactions of this Society, with a republication of 

 the splendid plates, by the permission of the Society, by which 

 many of them were illustrated. He was also the author of several 

 other works upon different subjects of anatomy and surgery ; and 

 he published in 1797, Memoirs of John Hunter, who had be- 

 queathed to him all his papers. 



Sir Everard Home must be considered as the successor of John 

 Hunter, and in every way most closely connected with him. He 



