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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
first President for six years. He discharged the duties of this office 
till the time of his death.* 
Dr Bache was a corresponding member of the French Academy 
of Sciences, and of various other learned societies. 
He died at Washington in 1867, and left a widow, who had been 
the companion of his labours. 
James Black, M.D., an eminent physician, was born in 1787. 
He began the study of medicine in the University' of Edinburgh 
in 1806, and became a licentiate of the Boyal College of Surgeons 
in 1808. In 1809 he was appointed an assistant surgeon in the 
Boyal Navy, and in the following year was appointed surgeon to 
the Kaven sloop-of-war, in which he served on the coast of Spain 
during the Peninsular war. 
After practising his profession for a short time in Newton- 
Stewarfc, he went to Bolton, in Lancashire, where he remained 
till 1839, when he removed to Manchester for the education of his 
family. In 1840 he was appointed physician to the Union Hos- 
pital, and lecturer on forensic medicine in the Medical School. 
As a member of the Philosophical Society, of which he was 
chosen President in 1859, he contributed to its “Transactions” many 
papers on Antiquities and Geology, and enriched its Museum with 
numerous specimens of the rocks and fossils of South Lancashire. 
In 1853 he was elected president of the Provincial Medical Asso- 
ciation, organised by the late Sir Charles Hastings of Worcester; 
and he was one of the original members of the British Association 
which met at York in 1831. In 1848 he returned to Bolton, where 
he remained for eight years, carrying on with activity the scientific 
pursuits of his early life. In 1856 he returned to Edinburgh, 
where he was elected a Fellow of this Society in 1857, and read 
several papers at its meetings. Dr Black was a Fellow of the 
Geological Societies of London and Paris, a member of the Medico- 
Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, of the Social Science Associa- 
tion, and of the Historic Society of Lancashire ; and he contributed 
several papers to their “ Proceedings.” Dr Black was also an active 
* The only separate work which he published beside his volume on Educa- 
tion, was an edition of Brewster’s Optics, with copious notes and a large 
appendix. 
