of Edinburgh , Session 1877 - 78 . 
503 
ability, clearness, and method which leave nothing to be desired for 
scientific instruction’s sake, — but he has thrown into the execution 
of his task such a plenitude of impartiality, such generosity of 
feeling and goodness of heart, that his account has been enthusiasti- 
cally reproduced in Paris, within the last few weeks, under the title 
of “ The genius of Le Yerrier appreciated in England.” 
Such then, so far as this imperfect account can go, was Urbain, 
Jean , Joseph , Le Yerrier. That grand existency, who was lost 
to the ranks of the Honorary Members of this Society, on the 
23d of last September ; when his spirit returned to God who 
gave it. 
In recording the lamented decease of the Hon. Lord Heaves, we 
have to record almost the greatest loss which the “ Literary class ” 
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh could have sustained. When 
this sad emit was announced in December of -last year, a universal 
note of lamentation was raised throughout the city. It was felt 
that a great figure had been taken away from our ranks ; that we 
had lost not only a learned and weighty Judge, but an accomplished 
scholar, a distinguished man of letters, a wit and a conversationist 
who contributed salt to all social gatherings, a racy Scottish char- 
acter, and “ one of the last links which connected the Edinburgh 
of to-day with the greater Edinburgh of the past.” But the loss 
which the Royal Society has sustained in Lord Heaves is special 
and peculiar, for he was rarely qualified for a literary Fellow of 
this Society, and as such he bravely played his part and contributed 
his share to our Proceedings, and he has left very few behind who can 
be at all compared with him. Lord Heaves possessed not only great in- 
tellectual activity and a predilection for scientific research, especially 
into questions of philology, but he was^also largely endowed with 
that quality which has been, on a former occasion, referred to as 
necessary for the maintenance of vitality in a Society like this — 
the quality of “ intellectual sociability.” He loved to communicate 
with others, to tell and to hear, upon topics of literature and science. 
We can all call to mind his genial manner, when presiding at 
meetings of the Royal Society, and the dry humour with which his 
scholarlike papers were interspersed. An exhibition of the same 
manner at one of the meetings of the Social Science Congress 
3 x 
VOL. IX. 
