XV 



Sir John and Lady Franklin, which lasted through their lives. This 

 coterie was soon largely though only temporarily augmented by 

 the arrival in Hobarton in 1840 of the Antarctic Expedition under 

 Sir James Clark Ross, who together with some of his officers, 

 assisted Sir John and Lady Franklin and Mr. Gunn in founding 

 the " Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science," the reading of 

 papers for which took place in the drawing-room of Government 

 House. From this small beginning sprang the Royal Society of 

 Tasmania, and the nascent periodical subsequently grew into the 

 " Proceedings of the Royal Society of Yan Diemen's Land," of which 

 Mr. Gunn was the editor, as he had been of the Journal, from the 

 first. 



Unfortunately Mr. Gunn's health broke down under the close con- 

 finement and long hours of office work at Hobarton ; and after ful- 

 filling various duties in Lauuceston and elsewhere, including that of 

 member of the Legislative Council for Launceston, and of the House 

 of Assembly for Selby, he was compelled to retire from the public 

 service in 1876. He eventually succumbed, March 12, 1881, to attacks 

 of creeping paralysis complicated with disease of the lungs. 



Mr. Gunn's published labours are few, but the results of his collec- 

 tions and copious observations are embodied in various works on 

 Australian science, and especially in Sir J. D. Hooker's : ' Flora of 

 Tasmania," and in Mr. Gould's " Birds of Australia." In conjunction 

 with the late Dr. J. E. Gray, he published notes and descriptions of 

 the mammals and fish of Van Diemen's Land, and he was the author 

 of a few other papers on the geology and some on the botany of that 

 island, together with one on the encroachments of the sea on the 

 north coast of Tasmania ; he further contributed to " West's History 

 of Tasmania" a compendium of its zoology. 



Mr. Gunn was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in January, 

 1850, and of the Royal Society on June 1, 1854. J. D. H. 



John Scott Russell, the eldest son of the Rev. David Russell, of 

 Clydesdale, was born in 1808, and displayed at an early age a great 

 predilection for mechanics and natural science. After some pre- 

 liminary practical training he studied at the Universities of Edin- 

 burgh, St. Andrew's, and Glasgow, at which latter he graduated at 

 the early age of sixteen. On the death of Sir John Leslie, Professor 

 of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh in 1832, Mr. Russell, being then 

 only twenty-four years of age, was appointed temporarily to carry on 

 the work of the chair during the session 1832-33. 



About this time he commenced his well-known researches on the 

 nature of waves, and the resistance of fluids to the motion of floating 

 bodies. His first paper on this subject was read before the British 

 Association in 1835, his deductions being founded on a very large and 



