PREFACE 



THE story of the Royal Society Club has been recently told 

 by a member hardly less eminent for his literary gifts than 

 as a geologist. But though much the senior, this was not 

 the only social club in the Royal Society. A second was 

 founded in 1847, an d continued till 1901, when the two 

 were united. Their aims, however, were not identical. 

 The older club had grown up, perhaps without any formal 

 beginning, as a social institution. The younger one, while 

 not by any means repudiating this position, had more 

 definite purposes. It arose from a sense of dissatisfaction, 

 which was felt, rather before the middle of last century, at 

 the condition and management of the Royal Society, by 

 not a few of its more energetic and eminent Fellows. They 

 were convinced that it was not occupying the position or 

 exercising the influence in the country which it ought to 

 be doing, and that this failure was partly due to the way 

 in which its Fellows were elected ; in other words, that 

 there was a danger lest it should be said of the Society, as 

 it was formerly of a very attractive College at Oxford, that 

 the chief qualifications for its Fellowship were for the 

 candidate to be ' well-born, well-dressed, and moderately 

 learned [in science]/ r< The agitation for reform," to quote 

 Sir A. Geikie's words, 1 " became so urgent that, in 1846, 

 the Council appointed a Committee to consider the mode 

 of election of Fellows. The result of the deliberations of 

 the Committee was seen next year in the adoption of a new 

 series of statutes which wrought a revolution in the pro- 

 cedure of the Society in regard to this matter." The 



1 Annals of the Royal Society Club, page 349. 



