The Presidential Address. 
7 
and at the time of his death he was an alderman and J.P. foi 
the borough, and senior partner of the firm of G-ibson, Tuke, 
and Gibson, 3 whose banking-house is one of the chief 
ornaments of the Market Square, where also stands a hand¬ 
some fountain erected by Mr. Gibson in commemoration of 
the Prince of Wales’s marriage. He built a new Town Hall 
and several almshouses in the town; further endowed the 
Hospital founded by his father; gave seven acres as a site 
for the Friends’ School, of which he was Treasurer, and a 
site with the princely donation of £10,000 to the British and 
Foreign School Society’s Training College. He was also a 
liberal contributor to the Free Grammar School and many 
other institutions, by no means exclusively those of the sect 
to which he belonged. For many years he had presided, as 
“ Clerk of the Yearly Meeting,” over the conferences of the 
Society of Friends, and the very last act of his life was in 
connection with this office ; since, acting as president during 
a long discussion on ‘ The Book of Discipline,’ he aggravated 
an internal disease of long standing, and died, after five weeks 
illness, at the Devonshire House Hotel, Bishopsgate Street, 
London, on April 5th, of inflammation of the kidneys. 
He was buried on the 11th in the pretty little burial-ground 
behind the Friends’ Meeting House, in his native town, being 
followed to the grave by about five thousand people, testifying 
to the general respect for one of whom it has been said that 
“he does not seem to have left a single enemy. 
Small of stature and with a face in which several persons 
have been struck by a resemblance to Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
he was quiet and unobtrusive in manner. Seldom speaking 
until he had formed a matured opinion, he was an unusually 
“well-read” man, of wide culture and of sound judgment. 
Exact, punctual, cautious, and conscientious in an unusual 
degree, he was alike fitted to succeed in business oi in 
scientific investigation. It has been written of him by those 
3 He was thus one of the remarkable number of botanists for whom we 
are indebted to the banking profession, among whom have been Dawson 
Turner, Edward Forster, and the present President of the Linnean 
Society, the two last members of one firm. 
