The Presideni's Address. 
35 
numbers three hundred strongs yet within the last year no 
less than five of our members have been taken from us by the 
unsparing hand of death. These are James Forbes Young, 
Charles May, David Laing, P. W. Fry, and George J ackson ; 
and of all the losses the Society has met with since 
its formation, no greater one has happened than that of so 
valuable a member as Mr. Jackson, for there is hardly one 
amongst us who has used the microscope as a scientific 
instrument, but has been more or less indebted to Mr. Jack- 
son^s skill for the instrument employed in taking accurate 
measurements of minute objects. 
Mr. George Jackson was the eldest son of a farmer at 
Higher Yellington, in South Devon, and was born in 1792. 
At an early age he exhibited a strong mechanical genius ; his 
first attempts in that direction being to manufacture a mouse- 
trap, his grandmother having promised him a guinea for the 
first that was caught, under the impression that such a thing 
was impossible ; a mouse, however, was soon trapped, and the 
promised guinea as quickly reduced to a half-crown. Then 
sixpence a head was the price affixed ; but still, even at this 
reduced rate, the money earned from the efficiency of the trap 
was considered too much for so young an artist, and payments 
consequently ceased altogether. He was educated at the 
Ashburton Grammar School, whither his innate tendencies, 
also followed him ; and if ever young J ackson was missing, he 
was sure to be found in the workshop of Mr. Ireland, the 
carpenter. Numerous lasting memorials of his skill, in the 
form of writing-desks, wOrk-boxes, &c., still remain to evidence 
this early predilection. 
Mr. Jackson was articled to Mr. Gervis, a surgeon and 
medical practitioner at Ashburton, whose sons had been his 
schoolfellows, and whose second daughter he afterwards 
married. He attended the lectures at the United Hospitals 
of St. Thomas and Guy, and took the diploma of Member 
of the Royal College of Surgeons of London in 1813. 
At an early period of his life he was an excellent manipu- 
lator with the table blowpipe, and supplied himself and many 
of his relatives and friends with most excellent thermometers, 
hydrometers, and barometers. He also constructed a transit 
instrument, which was erected, when in use, on a stone 
cantilever firmly embedded into the wall behind his house. 
In 1826, he was rewarded by the Society of Arts for an 
ingenious and useful instantaneous light-apparatus, being a 
modification of the hydrogen and spongy platinum lamp. 
Mr. J ackson was an early lover of the microscope, and many 
years before the existence of our Society constructed a very 
