ROYAL FERN 



ROYAL SOCIETY 



13 



able alliances, the following special rules are 

 applied to members of the royal family : ( 1 ) By 

 the Royal Marriage Act of 1772 it is enacted that 

 no descendant of George II. ( other than the issue 

 of princesses married into foreign families) may 

 marry without the consent of the sovereign ; any 

 marnage contracted without such consent is void. 

 But any such descendant, if above the age of 

 twenty-five, may, after twelve months' notice to 

 the Privy-council, contract marriage without such 

 consent, unless both Houses of Parliament declare 

 their disapproval. All persons who solemnise or 

 are present at a marriage contrary to the act are 

 liable to the penalties of praemunire. The act was 

 passed in consequence of the marriage of the Duke 

 of Gloucester with the widow of Lord Waldegrave 

 and of the Duke of Cumberland with the widow of 

 Colonel Horton. In 1793 the Duke of Sussex was 

 married at Rome to Lady Augusta Murray ; the 

 marriage was declared void by the Prerogative 

 Court, and the claims of Sir Augustus d'Este, eldest 

 son of the marriage, were rejected by the House 

 of Lords in 1844. (2) The grandchildren of the 

 sovereign ( not being the issue of princesses married 

 to foreigners and residing abroad) are under the 

 control of the sovereign, who may order the place 

 of their abode, without regard to the wishes of 

 their parents. The law was so laid down by a 

 majority of the judges in the case of the children 

 of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1737. The policy 

 of these rules has been much questioned, and the 

 conduct of George IV. in regard to his marriage 

 with Mrs Fitzherbert ( q. v. ) in 1785 affords a strong 

 argument against the existing law. 



The civil list being found inadequate to the 

 maintenance of the royal family. Queen Victoria 

 was empowered to grant to various members of 

 her family, annuities payable out of the Consoli- 

 dated Fund ; these aggregated 188,000 per annum 

 at the time of her death. Any proposed grant 

 to a royal personage is tolerably certain to be 

 opposed in the House of Commons ; the arguments 

 in favour of such grants were forcibly stated by 

 Mr Gladstone in his speech on the proposal to 

 make provision for the children of the Prince of 

 Wales, delivered during the session of 1890. 



Royal Feril (0wnrfn), the most striking of 

 British ferns ; it grows in damp places, and used to 



Royal Fern ( Omunda regalit) : 

 *, leaflet of barren frond ; 6, portion of fertile frond. 



be fairly common in the district* of Scotland and 

 Ireland of a very moist climate, bnt is disappearing 



before collectors. It has two kinds of leaves, 

 sterile and fertile ; the sterile are bipinnate ; the 

 fertile, covered with spore-cases, have the appear- 

 ance of a pannicled inflorescence, due to the 

 absorption of the central tissues hence the name 

 Flowering Fern. The genus is allied to another, 

 Todea, which has only one kind of leaf, and the 

 two are included in the order Osmundacea>. There 

 are only a very few species. The order occupies a 

 position between the typical ferns and the Marat- 

 tiacese. The spores give rise at once to the pro- 

 thallium without the intervention of a protonema ; 

 and the prothalli tend to be unisexual i.e. to 

 have the male and female organs on separate 

 plants ; or the male organs appear on the prothallus 

 before the female. The bases of the leaves and 

 root-stocks are rich in mucilage, which, being 

 extracted by boiling water, is sometimes used in 

 north Europe instead of starch. 



Royal George. See WRECKS. 



Royal Institution, founded in 1799 by Count 

 Rumford, Sir Joseph Banks, and others, received a 

 royal charter in 1800, and had for its objects the 

 facilitating of mechanical inventions, the promo- 

 tion of their use, and the teaching of science and 

 its applications by means of lectures and experi- 

 ments. It was reconstituted in 1810. Among its 

 lecturers have l>een Thomas Young, Davy, Brande, 

 Faraday, Tyndall, Frankland, and Rayleigh. It 

 maintains professors of natural philosophy, chemis- 

 try and physiology, and has laboratories ( including 

 since 1896 the Davy-Faraday research laboratory 

 presented by Dr Ludwig Mond ). 



Royal Military Asylum, an institution at 

 Chelsea for educating the sons generally orphans 

 of British soldiers. For these there are a 

 model school and an infant school, and the boys 

 have a completely military organisation, with 

 scarlet uniform. Irnnd, &c. The school was origin- 

 ally established in 1803 by the Duke of York, 

 whence it is still commonly known as the ' Duke 

 of York's School.' There is a similar institution, 

 the Royal Hibernian Military School, at the 

 Phoenix Park, Dublin. As a result of their train- 

 ing a large proportion of the pupils ultimately 

 volunteer into the army ; and the military bands 

 are largely recruited from these schools. See 

 MILITARY SCHOOLS, BAND. 



Royal Society. The origin of this society 

 may be traced back to those stirring years of civil 

 strife that brought in the Commonwealth. Clubs 

 for political, theological, and sectarian purposes 

 were then numerous and active ; and in the year 

 1645 ' divers worthy persons, inquisitive into 

 natural philosophy, and other parts of human 

 learning, did, by agreements, meet weekly in Lon- 

 don on a certain day, to treat and discourse of such 

 affairs.' Among these worthy persons were certain 

 medical men, Dr Wilkins, afterwards Bishop of 

 Chester ; Foster, professor of astronomy in Gresnam 

 College ; Wallis, the mathematician ; and others, 

 including Haak, a learned German from the Pala- 

 tinate ; and out of their meetings arose the now 

 world-famous Royal Society. Wallis records that 

 the subjects discoursed of were ' the circulation of 

 the blood ; the valves in the veins ; the vense 

 lactese ; the lymphatic vessels ; the Copemican 

 hypothesis ; the nature of comets and new stars ; 

 the satellites of Jupiter ; the oval shape of Saturn ; 

 the spots in the sun, and its turning on its own 

 axis ; the inequalities and selenography of the 

 moon ; the several phases of Venus and Mercury ; 

 the improvement of telescopes, and grinding of 

 glasses for that purpose ; the weight of air ; the 

 possibility or impossibility of vacuities, and nature's 

 abhorrence thereof ; the Torricellian experiment in 

 quicksilver ; the descent of heavy bodies, and the 



