Notes

Abstract

AT a full meeting of the Council of the Zoological Society, held on the 5th inst. at the Society's office, in Hanover Square, Prof. William Henry Flower, F.R.S., Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, was unanimously elected president of the Society, in succession to the late Marquis of Tweeddale. The new president, who, we need hardly inform the readers of NATURE, is one of the most learned zoologists and anatomists of the present day, has been for some years on the Council of the Society and one of its vice-presidents, and has communicated many valuable memoirs to its Transactions and Proceedings. Prof. Flower is the seventh president elected since the foundation of the Society in 1826. Sir Stamford Raffles, the first president, who died a few months after the foundation of the Society, was succeeded by the Marquis of Lansdowne, who resigned in February, 1831, in favour of the thirteenth Earl of Derby, then Lord Stanley. He held the presidentship for upwards of twenty years, and on his death, in 1851, was succeeded by the late Prince Consort. On the death of the Prince Consort, in 1861, Sir George Clerk, of Penicuik, was chosen as his successor, and retained the presidentship until his death, in 1867. He was succeeded in January, 1868, by the late Lord Tweeddale, then Viscount Walden, whose death has caused the vacancy to which Prof. Flower has succeeded.