Proceedings of the Jioyal ^cottt^h Society of Arts, 405 



22d November 1841. — Sir John Robison, K.H., President, 

 in the Chair. 



Before commencing the business of the evening, the Presi- 

 dent expressed the gratification he felt in being placed in the 

 Chair of a Society in the welfare of which he had always taken 

 a warm interest, having co-operated with Sir D. Brewster and 

 Mr Guthrie Wright in its early organization, and having ac- 

 companied it in its progress from small beginnings to the state 

 of vigour and efficiency which it had now attained ; a state of 

 prosperity, he observed, which was in a great measure owing 

 to the unwearied assiduity of their Secretary, and to the zeal 

 and talent of the successive Councils, and of his predecessors 

 in the Chair, to whom the Society had intrusted the manage- 

 ment of their affairs. He added a hope that the progressive 

 advance which had been made by the Society would be con- 

 tinued, and that, with the augmented numbers and renewed 

 activity of the members, they might anticipate a copious supply 

 of valuable communications, from which large additions might 

 be gained to their stores of useful knowledge. The President 

 then proceeded to add, that many well-informed persons doubt- 

 ed the utility of such Institutions in promoting the useful arts. 

 These persons enquire, "Where are the great inventions or im- 

 provements which such societies have produced ?" To such per- 

 sons he suggested it might be replied, that their view of the 

 effects of such societies was a very limited one, and that they 

 might with as little justice assert, that a whet-stone was of no 

 use, because it is not applied directly to the fabrication of 

 machinery ; yet without this whet-stone to prepare his instru- 

 ments, the mechanic could not construct any of those machines 

 which had raised Britain to its eminent rank among nations. 

 It might not often be the interest of individuals to make such 

 societies the channels by which their discoveries or improve- 

 ments should be brought before the public; but it did not follow 

 that the first germs of their discoveries were not sown in such 

 meetings, although the blossom and the fruit might appear 

 elsewhere ; their meetings might be looked on as whet-stones 

 of the intellect, and few persons who attended them would 

 say, that, in listening to the communications read at them they 



