6 
nary list includes 269 Fellows. The newly-elected Fellows are 
Horatio Ross, Esq., Hr James Black, Hr John Ivor Murray, 
The Right Hon . John Melville, Lord Provost, John Blackwood, 
Esq., Brinsley de Gourcy Nixon, Esq., Andrew Murray , Esq., W.S., 
Rev. Hr Macfarlane, Huddingston , Hr W. M. Buchanan, and 
Thomas Login, Esq., C.E. Our loss has therefore been exactly 
replaced, so far as mere number is concerned. 
Whether our loss has been replaced in other respects than in mere 
numbers, is a question which the future only can answer. But if 
our new members are to take upon themselves the duty of repairing 
in all respects the casualties of the last twelve months, they have an 
arduous task before them ; for, among our losses, we have to deplore 
the deaths of William Henry Playfair , William Scoresby, Marshall 
Hall, and John Fleming, — names, than which we can scarcely point 
to any in the British Islands more estimable in their respective sciences 
of Architecture, Navigation, Physiology, and Natural History. 
In one respect these gentlemen have had a common fate. They 
have all attained to an advanced age, —dying, except partially in one 
instance, in the pride of mental vigour, but yet not until each had left 
behind him works that are likely to be imperishable, so far as the 
work of man may be so. This consideration casts a ray of sunshine 
over our gloom of regret at their disappearance from amongst us. 
But it cannot render our calamity less material, and must only in- 
crease our anxiety that their places here may be worthily and 
speedily filled from the succeeding generations of members. 
The other deceased fellows whom I have to mention are Mr John 
Heiuar, advocate, Mr Bald, civil engineer in London, Mr John 
Haldane of Haddington, Mr George Forbes, banker in this city, 
and Mr John Adie, optician in Edinburgh. Of these Mr Haldane 
was known to us as an unobtrusive amateur in natural history, to which 
he was naturally enough attracted during his long service in earlier 
life, as an able officer of the Hudson’s Bay Company in North America. 
Mr Forbes, one of a family long remarkable in our city for worth and 
talent, and still represented now more ably than ever in this Society, 
was for some years our faithful and zealous Treasurer ; and 
was endeared to many of us as a gentleman of cultivated taste in 
literature and art, and to the whole community as a man of most 
amiable disposition, constantly abounding in works of active practical 
benevolence. Mr Ache’s enrolment among us is sufficient proof 
