210 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [MAY 7, 
live with; such an assemblage of friends as fewer still have had 
the happiness to possess and keep through life.” 
As the century drew towards its end, the Lunar Society 
gradually dissolved, its members dropping off one by one. 
Priestley had emigrated; Thomas Day was killed by a fall from 
his horse, in 1789; Dr. Withering died of a lingering consump- 
tion, in 1799;* Dr. Darwin was carried off by an attack of an- 
gina pectoris, in 1802; and the ever-welcome guest Josiah 
Wedgwood passed away in 1795; Capt. Keir, James Watt, and 
Boulton, the founder, were almost the only members surviving. 
The vacant seats remained unfilled and the meetings passed into 
history. The few lingering survivors found its associations too 
painful to be continued. But the influence exerted by the so- 
ciety did not die; it had stimulated inquiry and quickened the 
zeal for knowledge of all who had come within its influence, and 
this spirit diffused and propagated itself in all directions. 
Leonard Horner, who visited Soho in 1809, thus refers to the 
continued moral influence of the association: ‘‘ The remnant 
of the Lunar Society,” he says, ‘‘and the fresh remembrance in 
others of the remarkable men who composed it, are very interest- 
ing. The impression which they made is not yet worn out, but 
shows itself to the second and third generation, in a spirit of 
scientific curiosity and free inquiry which even yet makes some 
stand against Toryism and the love of gain.” (Smiles.) 
Social gatherings of men having kindred intellectual interests 
and pursuits have many advantages which are lacking in other 
organizations of a more formal character. An Academy of 
Sciences is the proper place for announcing discoveries in 
every department of learning, but the parliamentary forms 
necessary to dignified proceedings forbid or hamper the freest 
interchange of opinions and the formation of those personal 
friendships which a social organization like the Lunar Society 
so admirably fosters. 
One of the members of the Lunar Society, Richard Lovell 
Edgworth, perceived this difference between the two classes of 
associations, and states the case in well chosen words. Alluding 
to the Lunar Society in his ‘‘ Memoirs,” he writes: 
‘* A society of literary men and a literary society may be very 
different. In the one, men give the results of their serius 
researches and detail their deliberate thoughts; in the other, the 
first hints of discoveries, the current observations, and the 
mutual collision of ideas are of important utility. The knowl- 
edge of each member of such a society becomes in time dissemi- 
! During his long illness, his friends said: ‘‘ The flower of physic is 
withering.” 
