10 
Scientific Progress of the Past Year. [January, 
Society from the Corps of the Royal Engineers. Travelling 
beyond the strict limits of his professional career, he endea- 
voured to give to his official work a wider range. And it 
was due to suggestions emanating from him that the Irish 
Survey was so extended as to make it the opportunity for 
collecting a great variety of local information, history, 
language, and antiquities, and that the map became the 
admiration of scientific travellers. 
Mr. Bennet Woodcroft’s name will always be associated 
with the foundation of that important department the Patent 
Office, with its Library, and Museum, of which he was the 
first executive officer. 
Professor Kelland and Mr. Brooke were among our vete- 
rans in the Society, and many of us will long recoiled! the 
lively interest in Science which the latter showed during his 
frequent attendance at our evening meetings. 
In Mr. W. Froude, to whom one of the Royal Medals 
was awarded in 1878, the Society, the public service of the 
country, and Science in general have sustained a loss which 
at one time would have been irreparable, and which even 
now, when his work has become an established science, is 
difficult to replace. 
Of Professor Clifford, and the gap which his death has 
caused among our friends and the world of science at large, 
I know not how to speak. His mathematical papers are 
being colledted by a careful and trusty hand, while his philo- 
sophical remains have been given to us by one who knew 
and loved him as he deserved. _ To the same friend we owe 
the memoir of his life, written indeed so far as that life can 
ever be written, but reminding us also at every line that his 
life was one the full story of which will always seem but 
half told. 
If in Professor Clifford we have lost one of our youngest, 
in Sir J. G. Shaw-Lefevre we have lost one of the oldest of 
our mathematical Fellows. Born before the present century, 
and Senior Wrangler at Cambridge before many of us were 
in existence, he seems to belong to a past age. But through 
a long and honourable course of unusually varied and 
responsible public life he always retained his interest in 
mathematics, and, himself no mean geometer of the old 
school, he had in his later years projected and a&ually begun 
a new edition of the works of Archimedes. Of his labours 
in connexion with University College, and afterwards with 
the University of London, all who are interested in liberal 
education will retain an appreciative and grateful memory. 
Our last loss, that of Professor Clerk Maxwell, has been 
