follows: "It is with feelings most gratifying to myself that I now
approach to the award of a royal medal to Sir Humphry Davy; and I esteem
it a most fortunate occurrence, that this award should have taken place
during the short period of my having to discharge the duties attached to
the office of president; having witnessed the whole progress of Sir
Humphry Davy's advancement in science and in reputation, from his first
attempts in his native town to vary some of Dr. Priestly's experiments
on the extraction of oxygen from marine vegetables to the point of
eminence which we all know him to have reached. It is not necessary for
me more than to advert to his discovery of nitrous oxyde; to his
investigation of the action of light on gases; on the nature of heat; to
his successful discrimination of proximate vegetable elements; nor to
his most scientific, ingenious, and useful invention, the
safety-lamp,--an invention reasoned out from its principles, with all
the accuracy and precision of mathematical deduction."

The course of Sir Humphry Davy to the highest rank as a chemical
philosopher, was, after his appointment at the Royal Institution, rapid
and brilliant; and if he was previously aided by as few of the advantages
of fortune as any man living, he had then at his disposal whatever his
industry and talents chose to command. We have given but a hasty outline
of his labours; but it is possible that he may have left behind him much,
not yet made public, for which, science will be still further indebted to
him. His works, papers, and letters are numerous, and the greatest
portion of them are contained in the Transactions of the Royal Society.
One of the most popular and interesting of his recent papers is that on
the _Phenomena of Volcanoes_. This contains a series of investigations of
Vesuvius, made by the author during a residence at Naples in 1819-20, and
bearing upon a previous hypothesis, "that metals of the alkalies and
earth might exist in the interior of the globe, and on being exposed to