MINUTES OF THE TASMANIAN SOCIETY. 
March 29, 1848. 
Mr. Ronald C. Gunn announced to the Society the lamented 
death, at the early age of 34, of Edmund Charles Hobson, M.D., 
which event took place at his villa, near Melbourne, Port Phillip, 
on 4th March instant, after an illness of four days. 
Dr. E. C. Hobson was a native of Tasmania, studied for some 
years under Dr. James Scott, R.N., Colonial Surgeon at Hobart 
Town, from whom he acquired much and varied information, 
and then visited England to complete his studies, where he 
obtained the regard and esteem of Professors Owen and Grant, 
and other eminent men in London. Alter visiting Paris, and 
various parts of France and Germany, he returned to Van Die¬ 
men’s Land in 1838, where he commenced practice as a general 
Practitioner at Hobart Town. 
In 1839 Dr. Hobson, in association with two or three gentle¬ 
men of congenial tastes, and under the auspices of His Excel¬ 
lency Sir John Franklin, our then estimable Governor, founded 
the Tasmanian Society for the advancement of Natural Science in 
Australia, which society still flourishes, and publishes the Tas¬ 
manian Journal. 
In 1840, he had an attack of fever at Hobart Town, which 
seriously injured a constitution which had been previously debi¬ 
litated by repeated attacks of bronchitis, and obliged him to 
seek the warmer climate of Port Phillip, as being more favorable 
to one in his impaired state of health. There, as in Van Die¬ 
men’s Land, his amiable and kind disposition attracted towards 
him the love of the poor, as it also conciliated and won the affec¬ 
tions of the rich, and by both he was universally beloved. 
Whilst in London he married Miss Adamson, daughter of an 
extensive merchant, by whom he has ieft three sons and one 
daughter, all very young. In Mrs. Hobson he found a most 
amiable and worthy partner, who not only fulfilled the duties of a 
wife and mother in the most exemplary manner, but aided him 
materially in his scientific pursuits by her great skill in drawing. 
A paper by Dr. Hobson, on the Callorynclvus Australis, 
appeared in the first number of the Tasmanian Journal, and his 
subsequent papers and observations on the blood globules of the 
Ornithorhynchus paradoxus (quoted by Professor Owen in the 
Cyclo. of Anat. and Physiol. Art. Montremata) ; on the fossil 
Bones of the Diprotodon, Kangaroos, &c. at Mount Macedon, 
Port Phillip; on the Geology of Point Nepean, and other parts 
of Port Phillip, &c., are too well known to the readers of this 
journal to require farther comment, and his labours have been 
fully appreciated aud acknowledged by Professor Owen, and 
others. 
Besides possessing an admirable knowledge of his profession, 
