14 
dormant and suspended. This is a reflex action, one of a countless 
multitude of phenomena which were entirely, or almost altogether, 
misunderstood until Marshall Hall caught the first glimpse of them, 
investigated, elucidated, and classified them, and deduced innumerable 
conclusions from them for explaining previously incomprehensible 
phenomena occurring in health, and still more in disease. This is 
the grand fact, the discovery of which we owe to Marshall Hall, 
and from which he afterwards proceeded to further discoveries in the 
physiology of the nervous system. 
Like other discoverers, he at first encountered much opposition 
to his new views. But all physiologists and physicians are now 
agreed in adopting the most important of them, and in acknowledg- 
ing the obligations which physiology and medical practice owe to him. 
For many of the latter years of his life, he was esteemed as one of 
the most successful physiological inquirers in Europe. He persevered 
in his researches till near the end of his life, which terminated in a 
slow and painful illness before the close of his 67th year. 
It still remains for me to take notice of one other loss which the 
Society and science have sustained, and a loss which, to us in parti- 
cular, is the most serious which the last twelve months have brought 
forth. By the death of Dr John Fleming , the Boyal Society has 
lost not only a man well known to science, but likewise one of its 
most useful and active members. He may be said to have been the 
last survivor of a group of naturalists who gave lustre to Scotland 
soon after the commencement of the present century. 
John Fleming was born at Bathgate in 1785. Having chosen 
the Church for his profession, and having been settled at an early 
age as a minister of the Church of Scotland, in the charge of the 
parish of Bressay, in Shetland, his first writings as a naturalist con- 
sisted of observations which he made on the zoology and geology of 
that interesting group of islands. Papers were read by him to the 
Wernerian Society of this city, so early as 1808, when he was only 
twenty-three years of age, on the Narwhal, and on the Bocks of 
Papa Stour. Being translated soon afterwards to the parish of 
Flisk, on the south shore of the Frith of Tay, he had fresh materials 
around him for pursuing his favourite researches, and made ample 
use of them for cultivating various branches of Natural History. Seve- 
ral of the most interesting districts of his neighbourhood, such as St 
