‘The Council of the Royal Society desire to record in their minutes the grief which they have felt in the death of James D. Forbes, Esq., lately Principal of St Andrews University, and their sense of the loss thus sustained—of one who was so great an ornament to science, and so long and so intimately connected with this Society. As a scientific inquirer, and as an academical instructor, the name of Dr Forbes will be held in reverence by all who knew him, or who benefited by his exertions; and it is a subject of deep regret that he should be cut off in the prime of life, and the scientific world deprived of his services at a time when his appointment as Principal of St Andrews University had placed him in a position where, if life and health had allowed, he might, by his further labours, have added to his own reputation and to the range of scientific discovery.