14 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
succeeded Dr Carte as Curator of that Department, but after 
twenty years’ service was compelled by illness to resign in 1887 — 
the same year in which he became a Fellow of this Society. 
Dr John Shand, after a distinguished University career, gradu- 
ated in Medicine at Edinburgh in 1844. For some time he held 
resident appointments in the Royal Infirmary, and afterwards 
became Assistant Pathologist. Leaving Edinburgh, he practised 
with much success at Kirkcudbright, where he held nearly every 
public appointment open to one of his profession. He was very 
popular, and a welcome visitor in cot and country mansion alike. 
Like all the members of his family he was an accomplished, not 
to say a daring, horseman. He was fond of telling how, on a 
certain occasion, he astonished the Galloway Hunt with the per- 
formance of a nag which he had picked up for the not very 
extravagant sum of <£10. Joining the hunt one day, he found his 
sporting friends balked by a formidable 6-feet wall, over which his 
wonderful purchase flew like a bird — giving a lead that none of the 
others dared to follow. In early manhood he was unfortunately 
prostrated by a hemiplegic attack. Recovering, he moved to this 
city, where he continued to practise his profession. He was a 
Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and was elected a 
Fellow of our Society so recently as last year. He died in the 
present year, on 12th March, at the age of 72. 
Thomas Henry Huxley was born at Ealing, in Middlesex, on 4th 
May 1825. He was educated at Ealing School and Charing Cross 
Hospital, and served as Assistant-Surgeon on H.M.S. “Victory,” 
and “Rattlesnake,” from 1846-50. In 1854 he became Palaeon- 
tologist to the Geological Survey, and Professor of Natural History 
in the Royal School of Mines, and, 1855, Fullerian Professor of 
Physiology at the Royal Institution. During his life he occupied 
many prominent posts. Thus in 1874 he was installed Lord 
Rector of Aberdeen University ; was Rede Lecturer at Cambridge 
in 1883, and President of the Royal Society from 1883-1885. 
This is not the place, nor am I competent to give any account of 
Huxley’s work as a man of science. He himself had a far too 
modest estimate of that work, when he wrote as follows : “I have 
subordinated any reasonable or unreasonable ambition for scientific 
fame which I may have permitted myself to entertain to other 
