Monday, 27th November 1876. SIR WILLIAM THOMSON, President, in the Chair. The following Council were elected : President. SIR WILLIAM THOMSON, Knt., LL.D. Honorary Vice-Presidents, having passed the Chair. Professor KELLAND. Vice-Presidents. Rev. W. LINDSAY ALEXANDER, D.D. ! The Hon. Lord NEAVES. General Secretary-Dr JOHN HUTTON Balfour. Monday, 4th December 1876. The Rev. W. LINDSAY ALEXANDER, D.D., one of the VicePresidents, at the request of the Council, gave the following Opening Address: GENTLEMEN, The Council having appointed me to deliver the address at the opening of this the ninety-fourth session of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, I have not felt myself at liberty to decline the appointment, though deeply conscious of my inability to discharge adequately the duty which has thus been laid upon me. I have, in the first instance, to advert to the changes which have taken place in the fellowship of the Society in the course of the past year. During that period the Society has lost by death nine of its Ordinary Fellows and three of its Foreign Honorary Fellows. These are by name Thomas Login, Esq., C.E., India. Sir George Harvey, Kt., P.R.S.A. James Warburton Begbie, M.D., F.R.C.P.E. Lewis D. B. Gordon, Esq., C.E. David Bryce, Esq., Architect. George Stirling Home-Drummond of Blair-Drummond, Esq. Thomas Laycock, M.D., F.R.C.P.E. The Most Noble the Marquis of Tweeddale, K.T., G.C.B., &c. Adolphe Theodore Brongniart, Paris. Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, Berlin. Fifteen new members were elected during the past year. The total number of Fellows of the Society at this date is 419, Following a practice which has grown to be a usage and a rule, I proceed to lay before the Society brief biographical sketches of the deceased members, so far as I have been enabled to gather materials for this purpose. I shall take them in the order in which they have been enumerated above. THOMAS LOGIN,* born at Stromness, in Orkney, in 1823, studied engineering at Dundee. In 1844 he obtained an appointment in the Public Works Department in India, and was engaged from 1847 to 1854 in the construction of the Ganges Canal under the late Sir P. T. Cautley, who has most cordially acknowledged that to Mr Login's advice and assistance "he was greatly indebted in designing and executing that work.” After this period Mr Login was invalided and came to England. In 1857 he returned to India, where he acted successively as executive engineer of the Darjeeling and Roorkee Roads and of the Northern Division of the Ganges Canal. In 1868 he again came to England, returning to India in 1870 to occupy the post of officiating superintending engineer at Umballa, where his labours were varied and arduous, and a return of his illness cut short his useful career on 5th June 1874, while engaged in an inspection of the Thibet Road in the Punjaub. While resident in India Mr Login made several communications on engineering, among which may be mentioned his paper on the "Benefits of irrigation in India, and on the proper construction of irrigating canals," for which he received a Telford Premium from the Institution of Civil Engineers; his "Description of the Ganges Canal," and recommendations for "Roads, Railways, and Canals for India;" and his paper "On the Delta of the Irrawaddy," com municated to this Society in 1857. Mr Login was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and was elected a Fellow of this Society in 1857. GEORGE HARVEY was a native of St Ninians, near Stirling, where he was born February 1806. His father, a respectable tradesman in that city, and a man of intelligence and piety, trained up his children in the fear of God, and in a strict regard to the claims of This sketch has been furnished by David Stevenson, Esq, C.E. honour and duty, and sent them forth to the business of life well educated and thoroughly imbued with upright and virtuous principles. From an early period George showed that his bent was towards the pictorial art; and his boyish efforts in that direction. proved that he had the natural gifts which, under due cultivation, promised to lead to eminence. In order to obtain this necessary culture he came in 1823 to Edinburgh, where he studied at the drawing school connected with the Institution. His first pictures were exhibited in 1826, and attracted much attention. In his earlier efforts he seems to have had Wilkie before him as his model; at any rate, his subjects were selected from scenes of humble Scottish life, such as Wilkie delighted to delineate. These Harvey reproduced with scrupulous truthfulness, and his pictures show a keener sense of the more humorous side of his subject even than those of Wilkie. The scenes he preferred to delineate were such as he had himself witnessed, and the features of which remained vividly impressed on his memory. One of his earliest pictures represented a village school during school hours,-the respectable master engaged in hearing a lesson from a class of boys and girls, and the rest of the pupils employed either in working at their slates or conning their lessons, or in weary vacuity waiting for the season of dismissal, or, as their bent inclined, playing tricks and working mischief out of the master's sight. This picture attracted the attention of an eminent patron of art, who desired to purchase it; but Harvey, having promised it to a friend, would not consent to sell it, even though his friend urged him not to lose the advantage, so important to a beginner, of getting his picture placed in the gallery of a celebrated collector. To the village school Harvey resorted oftener than once, even in the more advanced stages of his career, for the subject of a picture, as his wellknown pictures of "The Examination " and "The Skule Skailin'" show. Other scenes of ordinary Scottish life were depicted by him at this time, such as "The Leisure Hour," "Disputing the Billet," "The Small-Debt Court," and in later years his "Curlers," his "Highland Funeral," his "Penny Bank," show the undying interest which the habits, pursuits, and manners of his countrymen had for him. As a religious man, the religious history of his country could not fail powerfully to engage his regards, and in connection with this some of the noblest efforts of his pencil were produced; his Covenanter pictures-The Preaching, Baptism, and Communion, as well as "The Battle of Drumclog "-attesting how deep was his sympathy with those who in evil days had to seek their spiritual sustenance and contend for their spiritual liberty at the peril of their lives; while his "Reading of the Bible in Old St Paul's," his "Bunyan in Prison," and his "Bunyan selling laces on Bedford Bridge," show that it was not to the religious history of his own country, or the struggles and sufferings of his own countrymen, that his sympathies were restricted. In the ecclesiastical movements of his own time, also, he took a deep interest; and his "Quitting of the Manse" remains to show how he could appreciate a noble sacrifice for conscience' sake on the part of those with whom he himself had no ecclesiastical connection. In the wider field of general historical painting Harvey did not attempt the delineation of great and stirring events, but contented himself with depicting scenes and actions of individual life or personal enterprise. As among his most powerful efforts in this wider field of his art may be mentioned his "Dawn revealing the New World to Columbus," his "Shakespeare before Sir Thomas Lucy," his "Robbers melting Plate," his "Castaway," and his "Dr Guthrie Preaching in the Highlands." He was fond also of painting groups of children, whose ways he had carefully observed, into whose affections and sympathies he lovingly entered, and from whose mimic sports he could draw lessons which by his pencil he sought to impress on older folks. It is only necessary to name his "Children blowing Bubbles in Greyfriars' Churchyard," and his "Wise and Foolish Builders," to illustrate his success in this department of his art. In his later years he betook himself to the painting of landscapes; and here, in the judgment of those most qualified to judge, he was at his best. As a delineator of Scottish pastoral scenery, whether in the Lowlands or in the Highlands, he in many respects stands without a rival. In portrait-painting he was less successful; still some noble portraits, that, for instance, of the late Professor Wilson, came from his easel; and in several of his historical pictures characteristic likenesses of eminent men living at the time are introduced. I cannot pretend to offer a critical estimate of Harvey's merits |