PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 
vol. vi. 1868-69. No. 78. 
At the first ordinary meeting of the Society on 7th December, 
the Makdougall-Brisbane Prize, for the Biennial Period 1866-68, 
was awarded to Dr Alexander Crum Brown and Dr Thomas Kichard 
Fraser, for their paper on the Connection between Chemical Con- 
stitution and Physiological Action. 
At the same meeting the Neill Prize, for the Triennial Period 
1865-68, was awarded to Dr William Carmichael MTntosh, for his 
paper on the British Nemerteans and on some new British Annelids. 
Monday , 4 th January 1869. 
Dr LYON PLAYFAIE, C.B., M.P., Vice-President, in the 
Chair, who said— 
It was my painful duty last year to allude to the death of that 
great philosopher, Sir David Brewster, and within a few months 
we have now to deplore the loss of another philosopher, also great 
— I need not say that I allude to Principal Forbes. This Society 
is intimately identified with his life and labours. Long our Secre- 
taty, he did all that was in his power to promote its success. As a 
man of science, we are too intimate in this place with his researches 
to render it necessary that, on the present occasion, I should make 
a detailed allusion to them. His early and his latest researches 
were upon heat. He established the polarisation and double refrac- 
tion of the heat ray, and proved the identity of thermal and lumi- 
nous radiations. His last published research is upon the conduc- 
tion of heat by iron. In this he has established that, like 
electricity, heat passes more slowly through a bar of elevated 
vol. vi. 3 N 
