720 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
the degree of M.D. Edinburgh, and in 1859 became F.R.C.S. 
Edinburgh. He was surgeon to the Bristol General Hospital for 
ten years, and on his resignation he became consulting surgeon. 
He also lectured on Medical Jurisprudence at the Bristol Medical 
School. He was elected a Eellow of our Society in 1869, and died 
on 24th April 1898. 
Emeritus Professor Matthew Forster Heddle was horn at 
Malsettar, in Hoy, one of the Orkney Islands. He was educated 
at Edinburgh Academy, and subsequently at Merchiston Castle, 
where he gained a school-prize for a herbarium, the plants of which 
he had collected. On leaving school he went through the medical 
curriculum in the University of Edinburgh, and in 1851 he gradu- 
ated M.D., his thesis being “The Ores of the Metals.” He then 
commenced practice in Edinburgh, hut having found medical work 
uncongenial, he abandoned it. Soon after this, in 1856, he went 
to Faroe, and collected a large quantity of fine zeolites. In 1856 
Dr Heddle became assistant to the Professor of Chemistry at St 
Andrews, and in 1862 was appointed to the Professorship. In 
1883 he relinquished his professorial duties and went to South 
Africa to report on certain mining possibilities there. He contri- 
buted to the Mineralogical Magazine a series of papers on “ The 
Geognosy of Scotland,” and eight papers to the Transactions of this 
Society, entitled “ Chapters on the Mineralogy of Scotland.” His 
great collection of Scottish Minerals, the outcome of the labour of 
a lifetime, became, partly by purchase and partly by gift, the 
property of the nation, and is now displayed in the Edinburgh 
Museum of Science and Art. He was elected a Eellow of this 
Society in 1876, and died on 19th November 1897. 
Lyon Playfair was born at Meerut on 21st May 1819. He 
was the second son of Dr George Playfair, Inspector-General of 
Hospitals in Bengal. He studied at St Andrews, and afterwards 
at Glasgow. He afterwards studied chemistry at University 
College, London, under Graham, from whom he had previously 
taken lessons at the Andersonian Institution in Glasgow. Then he 
went to Giessen to learn organic chemistry under Liebig. On his 
return he managed extensive calico-printing- works at Clitheroe. 
In 1843 he went to Manchester, where he was appointed Professor 
of Chemistry at the Royal Institution. In recognition of his 
