140 THE PRESIDENCY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY 



same sort of relaxation that Metaphysics are to Huxley. 

 I have no sense of weariness after them. Of course I must 

 expect some rows and difficulties in the Society, and they 

 will come when least expected, you will say, but mean- 

 while let me enjoy my illusions. 



Much labour and correspondence were also involved in 

 preparing the Presidential Address for the Anniversary 

 meetings, when the medallists and their services to science 

 were announced and the work of the Society for the past year 

 summarised. 



Thus he writes to Darwin, October 11, 1874 : 



I am busy with my address for R.S., which I am advised 

 to make a purely business one, and confine it to the opera- 

 tions of the Society, its Committees, Funds, labours under 

 Government and private affairs, about which it appears 

 that the Fellows in general are absolutely ignorant. They 

 know nothing of the Donation Fund, Government Grant, 

 Sc. Relief Fund, and the dozen or so Committees, many of 

 them Standing Committees, that involve an amount of work 

 on the part of the officers that not only justifies paying the 

 Secretaries but makes it expedient for the Society to do so, 

 and necessary to support themselves. 



To summarise his Presidential Addresses : the first, in 

 1874, reviewed the finances and work of the Society ; the 

 second, in 1875, dealt with various scientific expeditions 

 initiated or directed by the Royal Society ; the third, in 1876, 

 with the relations between the R.S. and Government, the 

 Government Grant Fund, the Vivisection Act, the Loan 

 Collection of Scientific Apparatus, the Meteorological Office, 

 and the return of the Challenger ; the fourth, in 1877, with 

 Nares' Polar expedition, the American Flora, and the relation 

 between the Cretaceous and Tertiary fossils ; the fifth and last, 

 in 1878, with the reduction of feeslo Fellows, recent discoveries, 

 Palseobotany and modern development of botanical science, 

 notably Darwin's work and the sequel to Burdon Sanderson's 

 discovery of electromotive properties in plants, and the new 

 world of knowledge opened by bacteriology and its bearing 

 on the theory of spontaneous generation. 



