3 
1914-15.] Opening Address by the President. 
Albert C. L, G. Gunther, M.D., Ph.D., F.R.S., for many years keeper 
of the zoological department of the British Museum, died on 1st February 
1914, at the age of 84. He was a Prussian by birth, and graduated in 
Science and Medicine at Tubingen. 
A full biographical notice from the pen of Professor MTntosh will soon 
be published in our Proceedings, so that it is not necessary at this time to 
give a detailed account of his valuable labours in systematic zoology. He 
was elected an Honorary Fellow of our Society in 1895. 
Col. Alexander Ross Clarke, C.B., R.E., F.R.S., who died on 11th 
February 1914, at 85 years of age, was one of the foremost geodesists of our 
time. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the corps of Royal Engineers 
in 1847, and was appointed to the Ordnance Survey in 1850. For thirty-one 
years his energies were devoted to the work of the Survey. In 1858 he pub- 
lished the final results of the Triangulation of the United Kingdom, and gave 
his first investigation as to the figure of the earth. In I860 he published an 
account of the comparison of the standards of length of various countries, 
and added a further discussion as to the shape of the earth. His work on 
geodesy, which appeared in 1880, has been translated into several languages. 
He was elected an Honorary Fellow of our Society in 1892. 
For the foregoing notices I am obliged to our Secretary, Dr Knott. 
Eduard Suess, the son of a German wool-merchant, domiciled in Eng- 
land, was born in London on 20th August 1831. Two or three years later the 
family left for Prague, and subsequently removed to Vienna. At the early 
age of 20, young Suess was appointed an assistant in the Imperial Museum 
of that city, where he devoted himself to the study of palaeontology with 
such zeal and ability that he became, in 1857, at the age of 26, extra- 
ordinary professor in the University. He had now found his metier, and 
ten years later he entered on the full professorship of geology — a post which 
he held for thirty-four years, retiring as emeritus professor in 1901. His 
success as a teacher is vouched for by the large number of his pupils who 
have subsequently risen to distinction in every department of geological 
research. Suess became well known to his countrymen not only as a 
teacher of geology, but as an able and energetic politician. In 1862, while 
still a young professor, he was much interested in the question of a pure 
water supply for Vienna, and was induced to enter the Municipal Council, 
that his fellow-citizens might get the benefit of his advice on this im- 
portant question. He then boldly advocated the introduction of the pure 
water of the Alps by means of an aqueduct, some 110 kilometres in length 
