256 
SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON’S ADDRESS. 
[May 24, 1858. 
to the arduous duties of chaplain among seamen, whose religious wel- 
fare he most zealously promoted ; his sermons, while they breathed 
the true spirit of Christianity, being strengthened by a tone of 
philosophical reflection which imparted to them much dignity and 
freshness. 
In the progress of Arctic exploration Scoresby continued to take 
the deepest interest. Although he had thought, from the first, that 
the attempts to find a North-West passage to the China Seas would 
prove to be unprofitable for political or commercial objects, he con- 
sidered that the scientific results justified all the risk and expense of 
such expeditions; maintaining that, even in regard to financial 
returns to the nation, the establishment of the Davis Strait fishery 
and of the trade of the Hudson Bay Company had compensated for 
the expenditure of public money in the early voyages of discovery. 
The scientific career of Dr. Scoresby in the latter years of his 
life is well known. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 
1824, and subsequently was elected a Correspondent of the Section of 
Geography and Navigation of the French Academy of Sciences. The 
Edinburgh Philosophical Journal and various scientific periodicals 
were enriched by occasional contributions from his pen on a variety 
of subjects of natural history and meteorology. To the observa- 
tions of magnetical phenomena he had long devoted close attention, 
and his investigations, published at intervals from 1839 to 1843, 
and the concluding volume in 1848, contain a vast amount of 
valuable materials for sound induction. His reports to the British 
Association, at the meetings of which body he was a frequent and 
welcome attendant, and his numerous observations on the influence 
of the iron of vessels on the compass, were connected with inquiries 
of the utmost practical importance to navigation. It was in prose- 
cuting these researches, and with a view to determine various 
questions of magnetic science, that Dr. Scoresby undertook a voyage 
to Australia, from which he returned last year, with his constitution 
much enfeebled by the arduous labours he had undergone. 
Of this good man we may truly affirm that his name will ever be 
remembered with honour among those who by their character and 
services have sustained the reputation and extended the influence 
of the British name by the peaceful triumphs of science and philan- 
thropy. 
Dr. Baron von Reden was born in the beginning of the present 
century, in the kingdom of Hanover, and was well known for his 
good statistical and geographical works on Germany, Austria, and 
