Preface 



vn 



to increase the influence of the Royal and other Scientific 

 Societies in Britain, and the second section giving summaries 

 of the after-dinner communications. 



It remains to add that, when Sir A. Geikie had completed 

 the Annals of the Royal Society Club, several of its members 

 thought that the history of the Philosophical Club should 

 also assume the more durable form of print, and in May, 

 1917, honoured me, as I happened to be the oldest survivor 

 of its members (for I was elected in 1883), by requesting me 

 to prepare its records for publication. It has been a longer 

 task thatf I had anticipated, and one which, though pleasant 

 from its varied and interesting matter, has been in some 

 respects rather saddening, for so many of those, whose 

 kindnesses I often experienced in my earlier days of 

 membership, have passed away from among us. But 

 now that I too have become a Nestor (at any rate in years) 

 among those who are handing on the torch of science to our 

 still younger generation, the study of these records cheers 

 me with hope for the future, because they show that, since 

 the foundation of the Philosophical Club, science has 

 advanced, with accelerated speed and increasing strength, 

 from a comparatively humble position in the Halls of 

 Learning to one, where its merits are more widely and fully 

 appreciated, and its powers of dissipating the mists of 

 ignorance and illuminating the darkness of superstition 

 are beginning to be acknowledged. 



