LTNNEA.N SOCIETY OF LONDOX. 



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William Somerville, M.J)., died on the 25th of June, 1860, at 

 Florence, in his 92nd year, being thus one of two nonagenarians 

 who have departed from among the Fellows of the Linnean Society 

 in the past year. 



He was formerly one of the principal Inspectors of the Army 

 Medical Board, and Physician to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. 



James Forbes Young, M.D., was born in April, 1796. He was 

 a magistrate and deputy lieutenant for Surrey, and an eminent 

 medical practitioner in Lambeth, having succeeded his father in 

 practice in the year 1836. His early education was conducted at 

 the Charter House, and he afterwards became a student of medicine 

 at Guy's Hospital, whence he proceeded to Edinburgh, where he 

 graduated in 1817. His unwearied industry and talents, combined 

 with his amicable and conciliatory disposition and deportment, 

 naturally led to a great extension of the practice he had inherited 

 from his father, and justly secured him the love and esteem of all 

 who had occasion to consult him, or came within the sphere of his 

 friendship. Like many others in his profession, he loved natural 

 science, and was distinguished by his ardent zeal in the cultivation 

 of botany and geology. Early in life he began the formation of 

 an herbarium, which is said to be rich in British plants collected 

 and arranged by himself. He also devoted much time and atten- 

 tion to, and was very successful in the cultivation of ferns, of which 

 plants he had perhaps one of the choicest collections, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of London. In Geology his attention appears to have 

 been chiefly devoted to the study and collection of chalk fossils, 

 of which he possessed an extensive and fine series. In addition 

 to these professional and scientific pursuits he was no mean anti- 

 quarian, and had made a considerable collection of prints relating 

 chiefly either to history or topography, and he had himself pro- 

 fusely illustrated editions of " Grainger's Biographical History of 

 England," "Pennant's London, " and the " History of Lambeth 

 and Charter House," — his own " alma mater, " besides other works 

 of a more miscellaneous character. 



Two years before his death his useful and laborious career was 

 interrupted by an attack of paralysis, from which he never wholly 

 recovered, and, gradually declining, he died on the 30th of June, 

 1860, and was buried in Lambeth churchyard, which also contains 

 the tombs of the " three Tradescants, grandsire, father and son," 

 restored some years ago under Dr. Young's superintendence. 



In our list of Foreign Members we have to lament the loss of 

 one of the oldest and most famous of European Zoologists, the 



