437 



and islands of the Indian and Chinese seas. It was soon after his 

 return to Europe in 1805, that he communicated to this Society, 

 through Mr. Cavendish, his very remarkable observations of the 

 equatropical motions of the mercury in the barometer when at sea ; 

 and contributed along with Captain Flinders, both by these observa- 

 tions and by other directions which he subsequently published, to 

 make more fully known the importance of barometrical observations 

 at sea, as affording indications of great or sudden atmospheric 

 changes. Captain Horsburgh was soon afterwards appointed Hydro- 

 grapher to the East India Company, with the usual judgement, and 

 discrimination of the Directors of that Body, in the selection and 

 rewarding of their officers ; and it was in this capacity that he pub- 

 lished not merely a great number of charts, but also " the East India 

 Sailing Directory, " the result of the unremitting labour of many 

 years, and founded partly upon his own observations, and partly 

 upon a very accurate examination and reduction of the vast hy- 

 drographical records which are in the possession of the East India 

 Company ; forming altogether one of the most valuable contributions 

 that was ever made by the labours of one man to the interests of 

 navigation. Captain Horsburgh was the author of other works con- 

 nected with his favourite science, and he continued to devole him- 

 self, until within a few days of his death, with almost unexampled 

 industry, to those pursuits which had formed, throughout his whole 

 life, the means by which he sought to benefit his countrymen and 

 mankind. 



Mr. William Blane was the author of a paper in our Transac- 

 tions, written fifty years ago, on the production and preparation of 

 Borax, which is brought from Jumlat in Thibet, over the Himalaya 

 mountains into Hindostan. 



Dr. David Hosack, of New York, was the author of a paper in 

 our Transactions, published in the year 1794. It related to the ex- 

 planation of the power which is possessed by the eye of adapting 

 itself to different distances, which he attributed to the action of the 

 external muscles of the eye, and not to the dilatation and contraction 

 of the iris, nor to the muscularity of the crystalline lens, by which its 

 convexity could be increased or diminished, a doctrine which had 

 been promulgated in a paper by Dr. Thomas Young, in the preced- 

 ing year. This subject is one of great interest, and has been very 

 frequently agitated ; and though an illustrious foreigner, M. Arago, 

 has recently defended the theory of Dr. Young with great ingenuity 

 and warmth, yet physiologists and anatomists are by no means agreed 

 on the adoption of this or any other single explanation. 



Mr. John Bell was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge in 1786, and 

 a Fellow of Trinity College. Though labouring under physical dis- 

 advantages of no ordinary kind, and such as were apparently the 

 most adverse to success in the public exercise of his profession as a 

 lawyer, yet he conquered every difficulty and reached the highest 

 eminence by his great acuteness and strength of mind, his extensive 

 legal knowledge, and, not a little, likewise, by his sturdy integrity and 

 love of truth, which he respected, — a rare virtue — , even in advocating 



