38 Address of the President at the Annual Meeting. 
entitled to receive the Journal free of cost, thus getting back 
more than three-fourths of the amount of his subscription. 
We have borne the increased rent charged to us by the 
Horticultural Society ; and we have, in addition, felt justi- 
fied in laying upon the Society's funds the cost of the tea 
furnished at the evening meetings, which had been previously 
defrayed by private subscription. 
Among the Members whom we have had the misfortune to 
lose by death during the past year — namely, the Rev. J. P. 
Bean, Professor E. Forbes, Mr. Finch, Mr. Ingpen, and Dr. 
Soulby — there is one whose high scientific eminence claims a 
special tribute on this occasion ; a tribute which, from my 
own long personal friendship with him, I feel it a privilege to 
have this opportunity of paying to his memory. 
The unexpected death of Professor Edward Forbes, on the 
18th of November, at the age of thirty-nine years, excited but 
one feeling of the deepest regret, not only in the scientific 
community of which he was so distinguished a member, but 
also throughout a far wider circle of personal friends than it 
falls to the lot of most men to possess. It was my good 
fortune to have first become acquainted with him at the time 
when we were fellow-students, nineteen years since, in the 
University of Edinburgh ; where be went through the full 
curriculum of medical study, but did not take his degree ; 
having, during his sojourn there, determined to abandon the 
pursuit of Medicine as a profession, in order to devote himself 
to the study and teaching of Natural History, for which he 
had very early shown a strong bias and a remarkable aptitude. 
The enlarged and philosophic spirit in which he pursued this 
science, is too widely known and too generally appreciated, for 
it to be necessary for me to dwell upon it here. His admir- 
able monograph on the " British Starfishes," published in 
1840-1, was the first work by which he became generally 
known as a Naturalist ; and very shortly after its appearance, 
he commenced those laborious researches in the iEgean Sea, 
on the distribution of marine life at different depths, which 
first brought him prominently into notice among the eminent 
cultivators of geological science of this and other countries, 
by whom his investigations were most highly estimated. From 
that time his scientific career was one of increasing honour to 
himself, and of the most eminent service to the sciences of 
zoology and geology, which he was continually enriching by 
original contributions of the greatest value. 
He was successively appointed to the Professorship of 
Botany in King's College, to the office of Palaeontologist to the 
Geological Survey, and to the distinguished post of President 
