506 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
and omissions of letters in certain cognate European words.” 
This paper dealt in a most interesting manner with the transfor- 
mations of words, and showed the identity between many pairs of 
words in cognate languages, where the words themselves had grown 
to be widely dissimilar. 
In this place we may surely say, “ Quis desiderio sit pudor aut 
modus Tam cari capitis?” What he brought to us here from time 
to time was part of the stores which he was for ever gathering in 
his library, where during all leisure hours he would sit, with heaps 
of volumes about him, plunged and absorbed in books. In his 
house many of us have enjoyed his genial hospitality, where, sur- 
rounded by a bright and intellectual family, he was himself “ a 
central warmth diffusing bliss,” ever gay and radiant, a downright 
opponent indeed of all shams and false pretences, but yet with a 
large-hearted charity for all. Beneath a laughing exterior Lord 
leaves concealed steadfast internal principles ; the writer of this 
paper remembers the “ sseva indignatio ” with which, on one 
occasion, he turned upon a foreign gentleman who had uttered a 
flippant and infidel remark. In all the relations of life he was 
blameless, and by his example he has shown that it is possible to 
combine piety, learning, wisdom, and hard and successful work 
with kindliness, brightness, laughter and joy. 
By the death of Mr Andrew Coventry, this Society, of which he 
had been for more than thirty-four years a Eellow, has lost one of the 
most amiable and accomplished of its members. Both Mr Coventry’s 
father and his grandfather were men of mark. His grandfather was 
a Congregationalist minister of some eminence near Kelso; his father 
was the first Professor of Agriculture in the University of Edinburgh, 
and is spoken of in terms of admiration in the letters of Kiebuhr, 
the great German scholar and historian, who at the beginning of 
this century was attending classes here. Mr Andrew Coventry was 
educated at the High School of Edinburgh, of which, when he left 
it, he was “ second dux.” He went through a course of study at the 
University, and seems to have paid particular attention to chemistry. 
In 1823 he was called to the bar, at which he made a good start, 
and was apparently rising, when, in 1840, he succeeded to the fortune 
of his uncle General Cuninghame, and relinquished professional 
