112 ORGANISATION 



in this meeting. Diplomas of honorary membership 

 and gifts of books were presented to Huxley as 

 President of the Association, to Stokes and Hooker 

 as his immediate predecessors in the chair, to Tyndall 

 and Rankine as deliverers of the evening discourses, 

 and to Lubbock as lecturer to the ' operative classes/ l 

 Huxley also received from the society a commemora- 

 tive bowl. For many years the series of presidential 

 banners remained in the society's ownership, a new 

 banner being added and the whole lent to the 

 Association for exhibition each year. This cumbrous 

 process was terminated in 1893, when the Association 

 acquired the banners from the Society by purchase. 

 The series has been maintained since then either by 

 presidents themselves, or by the Association, or by 

 local committees at places of meeting. 



ROYAL INTEREST 



This chapter may be fittingly concluded with a 

 reference to the interest which has been graciously 

 expressed from time to time by the Royal Family 

 in the work of the Association. The individual 

 scientific interests of certain members of that Family 

 in earlier days will appear elsewhere ; but active 

 royal participation in the meetings was initiated by 

 the Prince Consort. He was no stranger to the 

 Association when he occupied its chair at the Aberdeen 

 meeting in 1859. Thus Murchison, as President at 

 the Southampton meeting in 1846, stated that that 

 meeting would be ( rendered memorable in our 

 annals by the presence of the illustrious Consort 

 of our beloved Sovereign, who, participating in our 



1 See p. 101. 



