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misery of considerable nations are dependent, and the intense feeling 

 of responsibility which is connected with the administration of 

 trusts so important, is well calculated, under all circumstances, to 

 call forth into action the highest powers of the human mind ; 

 and particularly so, when they have been previously exercised 

 and fortified, as in our Indian service, by the severe study of Ori- 

 ental languages, and by the successive occupation of different offices, 

 with a great diversity of duties : it is to such causes that we are to 

 attribute the frequent union which we observe in this service of the 

 greatest civil and military talents with the most profound acqui- 

 sitions in Oriental learning ; it is to this system that we are indebted 

 for the production of a Duncan and a Monro, an Elphinstone and a 

 Raffles, a Colebrooke and a Malcolm, and a crowd of great men 

 who have done so much honour to our Indian Government. 



Alexander Barry, Professor of Chemistry to Guy's Hospital, and 

 the author of a short paper in our Transactions for 1831, " On the 

 Chemical Action of Atmospheric Electricity," fell a victim to the 

 imprudent pursuit of his chemical inquiries. He was making expe- 

 riments upon some gases in a highly condensed state, when an ex- 

 plosion took place, by the effects of which he was so much injured 

 as to occasion his death shortly afterwards. He was elected a Fel- 

 low of this Society in the course of the last year. 



John Shaw, Architect, is advantageously known to the public by 

 several works in the Metropolis, particularly the great hall in Christ's 

 Hospital, and the new church of St. Dunstan in Fleet Street : works 

 which are extremely effective, and well adapted to their objects and 

 positions. 



Stephen Groombridge, Esq., was the author of two papers in our 

 Transactions for 1810 and 1814, of considerable interest and value, 

 upon the subject of astronomical refractions : his observations were 

 made at his house at Blackheath, with a four-feet transit circle, 

 which has acquired no small degree of celebrity from its being the 

 first instrument, after the Westbury Circle, to which Mr. Trough- 

 ton applied his method of division, which he has described in our 

 Transactions. Mr. Groombridge made many thousand observations, 

 which have been reduced by order, and published at the expense of, 

 Government, — a circumstance well deserving to be known by all 

 astronomers, as he was an able and faithful observer, and possessed 

 more advantages for making meridian observations than are com- 

 monly enjoyed without the walls of a regular observatory. 



Sir Richard Hussey Bickerton was a very distinguished naval offi- 

 cer, who was employed in the service of his country for the greatest 

 part of his life, and who was for some time second in command to Lord 

 Nelson in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, and enjoyed his entire 

 confidence and esteem. He was one of the Lords of the Admiralty 

 from 1805 to 1812, a circumstance which brought him into frequent 

 communication with the Royal Society, and led to his election as a 

 Fellow in 1810. 



In our list of Foreign Members, we have to record the deaths of 

 Cuvier and of Chaptal in France, of the Baron de Zach in Germany, 



