254 
SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON’S ADDRESS. 
[May 24, 1858. 
slavery, the discontinuance of state lotteries, the extension of 
Native education, and the more general employment of well- 
qualified Natives in the administration of public affairs. In 1844, 
having been in the service of the East India Company forty-one 
years, he retired, and returned to England. On his departure 
from Calcutta, addresses were presented to him by the European 
and Native inhabitants, expressive of their sentiments of respect 
and esteem for his character and conduct, both as a public officer and 
a private gentleman. He passed his remaining days in the privacy 
of domestic life, beloved by all his friends, and particularly by his as- 
sociates of the old Raleigh, now the Geographical, Club. He died in 
London, after a few hours’ illness, on the 1st June, 1857, aged 73. 
The Rev. Dr. Scoresby. — Although it is not my bounden duty to 
offer to you sketches of the lives of our countrymen who have not 
been members of our body, yet when a very remarkable explorer, 
voyager, or geographer, who has not joined us, is taken from this 
world, I follow the practice adopted some years ago of attempting to 
bring the striking points of his character to your mind’s eye. A man 
eminently entitled to be thus singled out was the late Dr. Scoresby, 
who, at the early age of ten years, commenced his career as a sea- 
man under the auspices of his father, one of the most successful 
captains of the port of Whitby in the Northern whale fishery. Thus 
early inured to the hardships and perils of the Arctic seas, his mind 
was developed by the employment of the winter months in pursuing 
a course of study at the University of Edinburgh, where his assiduity 
and ability gained him the friendship of the professors, and laid the 
foundation of that knowledge which enabled him subsequently to 
offer in so admirable and clear a manner an account of the Arctic 
regions. 
As chief mate of his father’s ship, the Resolution , he had the 
honour of navigating to the highest northern latitude then attained 
by any vessel, viz. 81° 30'; and though Sir E. Parry, in his cele- 
brated boat expedition during his fourth voyage in 1827, arrived 
at 82° 45 r , the distinction of being second in the approach to the 
Pole yet remains with Scoresby and his father. 
The account of the Arctic regions, being the result of 17 years’ 
experience in those seas, appeared in 1820, in two volumes; and 
besides a vast amount of statistical information relative to the whale 
fishery, then the most important nursery for our seamen, this work 
contains so great a mass of scientific observation that it is still a 
text-book of nautical science. 
