Note (return) — THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.

During his retirement on the Continent, Sir Humphry continued to communicate the splendid results of his labours to the Royal Society, and at the anniversary meeting of the year 1827, the royal medal was awarded to him for a series of brilliant discoveries developing the relation between electricity and chemistry.5 Upon this interesting occasion, Mr. Davies Gilbert spoke at some length, commencing as 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."