1898 - 99 .] 
Meetings of the Society . 
721 
services on a Commission to inquire into the sanitary condition of 
large towns, he was appointed in 1846 Chemist to the Museum of 
Practical Geology. 
He was appointed Special Commissioner in the Department of 
Juries in the Great Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862, and for his ser- 
vices in the first of these he was rewarded with the Companionship 
of the Bath, and an appointment in the household of Prince Albert. 
In 1856 he became Professor of Chemistry in the University of 
Edinburgh, where the Prince of Wales and Prince Alfred were 
among his pupils. This post he held till 1869. Prior to 1862 he 
had been appointed Inspector-General of Government Museums 
and Schools of Science. A scheme for the reorganisation of the 
Civil Service, which bears his name, was the outcome of a Com- 
mission appointed in 1884, of which Playfair was the President. 
At the general election of 1868 Playfair was returned to Parlia- 
ment by the Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews, and he 
retained the confidence of the constituencies for seventeen years. 
He was Postmaster-General in 1873, and in 1880 he was appointed 
Chairman of Ways and Means. That office he resigned in 1883, 
and was then made K.C.B. In 1885 and 1886 he was returned 
for the Southern Division of Leeds, and became Vice-President of 
the Council, and represented the constituency until he became a 
Peer in 1892. He was the author of a work which appeared 
under the title of Subjects of Social Welfare. He was elected a 
Fellow of this Society in 1859, and died on 29th May 1898. 
The Honourable Bouverie Francis Primrose was the second 
son of the fourth Earl of Bosebery, and was uncle of the present 
Earl. He was born on the 19th September 1813, and educated at 
Trinity College, Cambridge. He rose through the several grades 
of the City of Edinburgh Rifle V olunteer Brigade to be Lieutenant- 
Colonel of the second battalion of that regiment. He was also a 
General in the Royal Company of Archers. In 1839 he received 
the appointment of Receiver-General of the Post Office in Scotland, 
which he resigned when he became Secretary to the Boards of 
Manufactures and Fisheries in Scotland. One of the leading 
events in his tenure of that office was the equipment of the 
Rational Gallery, which involved complicated negotiations and the 
expenditure of about £50,000. A large share of the labour con- 
YOL. XXII. 3 A 
