444 



and 1 believe I may venture to say, that in no case lias a noMe inhe- 

 ritance been more carefully cultivated or more enriched by new 

 acquisitions. The catalogue for which the Royal Medal is now given, 

 contains a list of 2500 nebulae and clusters of stars, the same number 

 which had been observed and catalogued by his father, though only 

 2000 of them are common to both catalogues ; the right ascensions 

 and declinations of all these objects are determined ; the general cha- 

 racter of their appearance recorded ; and all those which present any 

 very extraordinary character, shape, or constitution, of which there 

 are nearly 100, are drawn with a delicacy and precision which is 

 worthy of an accomplished artist. It presents a record of those 

 objects so interesting as forming the basis of our speculations on the 

 physical constitution of the heavens which are observable in this 

 hemisphere, which is sufficiently perfect to become a standard of 

 reference for all future observers, and which will furnish the means 

 of ascertaining the changes, whether periodical or not, which many of 

 them are probably destined to undergo. 1 trust, Gentlemen, that a 

 long time will not elapse before we shall be enabled to welcome the 

 return of Sir John Herschel to this country, with materials for a 

 catalogue of the nebulas of the southern hemisphere as perfect and 

 as comprehensive as that which we are this day called upon to signa- 

 lize with the highest mark of approbation which it is in our power to 

 bestow. "He will then have fixed the monuments of an imperishable 

 fame in every region of the heavens. 



The Royal Medal for the present year, which the Council had 

 proposed to give to the most important paper in Animal Physiology 

 communicated to the Royal Society within the last three years, is 

 awarded to George Newport, Esq., for his series of investigations 

 on the Anatomy and Physiology of Insects, contained in his two pa- 

 pers published in the Philosophical Transactions within that period. 



Mr. Newport, to whom the Society was indebted in 1832 for a 

 very valuable and elaborate anatomical investigation of the nervous 

 system of the Sphinx ligustri of Linnseus, and of the successive 

 changes which that insect undergoes during the state of larva, and the 

 earlier stages of the pupa state, published in the Philosophical 

 Transactions of that year, has since prosecuted this arduous and la- 

 borious train of inquiry, under circumstances of peculiar difficulty, 

 with extraordinary zeal and indefatigable perseverance. Within the 

 period of the last three years he has enriched the Transactions with 

 two papers, in the first of w ? hich, read to the Society in June 1834, 

 he has extended his researches into the structure and arrangement of 

 the different portions of the nervous system of the same insect, fol- 

 lowing their successive changes through the remaining stages of de- 

 velopement to the completion of the imago, or perfect state. He 

 devotes particular attention to the study of the periods at which 

 those several changes occur; for he has found that they vary consi- 

 derably in the rapidity of their progress at different epochs, according 

 as the vital powers are called into action by external influences, or 

 as they become exhausted by their efforts in effecting the growth, or 



