[ 269 ] 

 XLIV. Proceedings of Learned Societies, 



ROYAL SOCIETY. 



[Continued from p. 211.] 



Nov. 30, A T the Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society, 



1837. -^^ Francis Baily, Esq., Vice-President and Treasurer, 

 in the chair. 



The Address of His Royal Highness the President to the Meeting, 

 was read from the Chair ; from which the following are extracts. 



I proceed to notice some of the more important events con- 

 nected with the administration of the Royal Society during the last 

 year. 



One of the Royal Medals has been adjudged to Mr. Whewell for 

 his very valuable series of Researches on the Tides, which have been 

 published in our Transactions, chiefly during the last three years. 

 I must refer you, Gentlemen, for a statement of the grounds upon 

 which this decision has been founded to the more detailed reports of 

 the Council, which will be read to you by your Secretary Dr. Roget; 

 but I gladly avail myself of this opportunity of expressing my respect 

 for the great talents and varied attainments of the distinguished phi- 

 losopher upon whom this mark of honour has been conferred. If I 

 regard him as occupied with the highest and most important prac- 

 tical duties connected with our system of academical education, and 

 in providing and arranging the materials by which it is conducted, 

 or the principles upon which it should be based, he will be found in 

 the foremost rank of those whose labours do not deserve the less 

 honour because they commonly absorb the entire time and attention 

 of those who are engaged in them, and thus close up the avenue to 

 those distinctions which are almost exclusively confined to great 

 discoveries in science, or to important productions in literature. 

 When I read his essays on the architecture of the middle ages, on 

 subjects of general literature, or on moral and metaphysical philo- 

 sophy, exhibiting powers of mind so various in their application 

 and so refined and cultivated in their character, I feel inclined to 

 forget the profound historian of science in the accomplished man ot 

 letters, or the learned amateur of art; but it is in his last and highest 

 vocation, whilst tracing the causes which have advanced or checked 

 the progress of the inductive sciences from the first dawn of philoso- 

 phy in Greece to their mature development in the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, or in pointing out the marks of design of an all-wise and all- 

 powerful Providence in the greatest of those works and operations of 

 nature which our senses or our knowledge can comprehend or ex- 

 plain, that Irecognise the productions of one of those superior minds 

 which are accustomed to exercise a powerful and lasting influence 

 upon the intellectual character and speculations of the age in which 

 they flourish. 



It is now three years since the Royal Medal was adjudged to Mr. 

 Lubbock for his Researches on the Tides ; and the Council have 

 availed themselves of the first opportunity which was presented by the 



