Address of the F resident at the Annual Meeting, 39 
of the Geological Society ; all of which he resigned last spring, 
on being chosen to succeed the late Professor Jameson in the 
Chair of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh, 
which he had long regarded as the summit of his ambition, 
but upon the duties of which he had scarcely entered, ere his 
life was cut short by the development of a disease, which (as 
the event proved) must long have been pursuing its fatal course 
without any external indication. 
To know the Professor was to know but little of Edward 
Forbes. Probably no man of his generation was so many- 
^ided. Not only science, but literature and art, found in him 
a hearty appreciation of all that was excellent. No clique 
could claim him as its own, for his sympathies were universal ; 
no man was more unselfish, or used his influence more gene- 
rously for the advancement even of those who might be in some 
sort his rivals, than Edward Forbes. Hence no one could 
know him, without not only admiring, but loving him ; and to 
every one who was worthy of his regard, he freely extended it. 
His genial humour and good-natured wit, joined to his other 
high qualifications, caused him to be universally welcomed as * 
a companion; yet, however ''petted/' he was never "spoiled" 
by the attentions he received, but remained the same genuinely- 
good fellow, when he had climbed to the top of the tree, as he 
was when, in the days of his studentship, he exercised that 
wonderful power of attaching others to him, which would have 
doubtless been exerted to the great advantage of his University 
and of science, had it been the will of Providence that his 
labours should have been prolonged in the new sphere on 
which he had so recently entered. 
Turning, now, to our own proceedings during the last 
twelvemonth, I cannot but feel some regret at not being able 
to speak in a more congratulatory tone, as to the number and 
importance of the communications which have been brought 
before us. Considering the great number of individuals who 
are occupied in microscopic research, and the large amount 
of novel facts which they must be continually encountering, it 
is to me a matter of surprise, as well as of regret, that so few 
of these should be made public through our instrumentality. 
Some of the best contributors to our former meetings have, I 
am aware, been kept back during the last year by the pressure 
of other engagements ; whilst others have entered with such 
zeal into the study and practice of the Photographic art, as to 
have been led away by its fascinations from their former alle- 
giance. Moreover, during the latter part of the last session, 
I understand that a dearth of papers was an epidemic disease 
by which almost every scientific society in London was more 
