72 Royal Society. 



would be easy indeed ; these might be found at every meeting of the 

 Society, in every page of your Transactions. Bat the medals are 

 evidently meant to distinguish somewhat more ; so that he who re- 

 ceives them may at the least be considered as primus inter pares with 

 respect to the particular subject of his attention. 



One of the royal medals your Council of this year have had no he- 

 sitation in adjudging to M. Encke for his researches and calculations 

 respecting the heavenly body usually distinguished by his name, and 

 which has again become visible in Europe, according to his predic- 

 tion ; and not merely visible, but corresponding witli its estimated 

 position in declination as well as in right ascension, to a degree of 

 accuracy scarcely susceptible of correction, unless by repeated obser- 

 vations. This body, to be denominated a planet or a comet, according 

 to the variety of definition, revolves round the sun in an elliptic 

 orbit, and within the short period of about three years and a third; but 

 its path cuts the orbits of four planets. It approaches within the di- 

 stance of Mercury, and recedes to about four-fifths of the distance of 

 Jupiter from the sun. The body appears to be without nucleus, or 

 any regularly defined form, and stars are seen through it. These 

 phsenomena seem to correspond with the hypothesis of condensed or 

 condensing nebulous matter, suggested by the greatest of sidereal 

 astronomers. And this comet, as it may then be called, attached to 

 our system, and describing equal areas in equal times round the sun, 

 must be considered, in many respects, as the most interesting known 

 body at present in the universe. Your Council have therefore been 

 anxious to mark the high sense they entertain of the ability and per- 

 severing industry whicli must have been exerted in determining all 

 the elements of an orbit so excentric, so much exposed to the influ- 

 ence of several planets, incapable of being estimated by the formulae 

 adapted to orbits nearly circular, and founded moreover, as these ele- 

 ments must have been, on observations difficult to make, and much 

 limited in point of time, and perhaps affected by the action of a re- 

 sisting medium. 



The other royal medal has been awarded by your Council for a 

 communication made under circumstances the most interesting and 

 most afflictive. An individual of whom not this Society alone, but 

 all England, is justly proud, whose merits have been appreciated and 

 distinguished by each of the eminently scientific establishments of 

 Europe, has recently been assailed by one of the most severe ma- 

 ladies to which human nature is exposed. But the energies of his 

 mind soaring beyond bodily infirmities, he has employed them in a 

 manner (I will presume to say) most acceptable to the Divinity, be- 

 cause most usefully to mankind, by imparting, through the medium 

 of this Society, further stores of knowledge to the world, which has 

 been so frequently before illuminated by the splendour of his genius. 

 On the first day of our meeting, a paper from Dr. Wollaston was 

 read, descriptive of the processes and manipulations by which he has 

 been enabled to supply all men of science with the most important 

 among the recently discovered metals. Platinum, possessed of va- 

 rious qualities useful in an eminent degree to chemists, even on a 



large 



