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country : the great business of the year, with all its responsibilities, 

 devolves therefore upon a section of the Society. A country gentle- 

 man, if named upon the Council, cannot conveniently attend in 

 November, and but few country gentlemen attend the anniversary*. 

 Our proceedings are therefore not of as much interest to the Fellows 

 taken as a whole as they might be made to be, and they are not 

 calculated to attract the men who, having attained high scientific 

 distinction at the Universities, reside in the country, unharassed by 

 professional calls, and who have therefore both training and leisure, 

 important elements of success in all scientific pursuits. 



The award of the medals at a time when so many Fellows are 

 absent is also attended with inconvenience ; for although an attempt 

 is made to secure for each science a kind of representation in the 

 Council, still so wide is the range of science now, that special de- 

 partments are often necessarily unrepresented. In disposing of 

 papers, the imperfect representation of individual sciences is un- 

 attended with inconvenience, because each paper is referred to two 

 Fellows to report upon ; the Council thus calls the whole Society 

 to its aid, and the result, I believe, is perfectly satisfactory. With 

 the medals it is otherwise ; no official reference is made to Fellows 

 not on the Council. There is a further difficulty. The questions 

 which usually arise are of this nature. Discoveries have been made 

 by different individuals in various sciences. Who has added most 

 to the general stock of knowledge by a positive contribution ? Who 

 has the merit of having effected discoveries of most promise ? Re- 

 collect, that in answering these questions some estimate must be 

 made of the weight due to each science, for they cannot be consi- 

 dered all alike ; very far from it. Some sciences require great 

 mental labour, guided by faculties of a very high order, a rare 

 gift ; while other sciences can be cultivated successfully by com- 

 mon-place men, with only a moderate amount of perseverance. 

 That such an estimate can be made, and which carries with it a 

 kind of general assent, is evidenced by the fact that it is annually 

 made, to some extent, at the examination for the Fellowship in the 

 University of Dublin, which bears a certain loose but not uninstruc- 



* At the last Anniversary the Fellows who voted amounted to 63, while there 

 are about 700 Fellows. I am informed, however, that usually several who are 

 actually present do not vote. 



