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the Third, and now for the more ample accommodation granted to 

 them by Her present Majesty. 



When the Royal Society was first established, there was no other 

 Society devoting itself to the pursuit of any branch of knowledge ; 

 and hence it was that many communications were made on subjects 

 not strictly belonging to those sciences, to which it was intended 

 that their attention should be more especially directed. If we refer 

 to their earlier publications, we find in one of them a scheme for a 

 universal alphabet ; in another, a dissertation on the Chinese lan- 

 guage. Father Gaubil, a missionary belonging to the order of 

 Jesuits, sends them a map of Pekin, with an exact account of the 

 imperial palace. An English merchant gives a history of his journey 

 to Aleppo and Tadmor ; others describe the discovery of tessellated 

 pavements and other Roman antiquities. In short, there is scarcely 

 any one department of knowledge, whether it be philology, history, 

 antiquities, medicine, geography, political economy, and even meta- 

 physics, which is not to a greater or less extent represented in the 

 Philosophical Transactions. But all this time knowledge of all kinds 

 was rapidly increasing, vires acquirens eundo. The time arrived 

 when a division of labour was required, and the Royal Society disco- 

 vered the necessity of confining themselves to their more legitimate 

 pursuits. In the year 1717 the institution of the Society of Anti- 

 quaries attracted one large class of communications from them. 

 After an interval of seventy years, the Linnean Society was founded 

 for the cultivation of natural history ; and I need not enumerate the 

 various other societies which have been since called into existence, 

 and which are now pursuing their course, not as rivals of the Royal 

 Society, but as cooperators with it in the great work of exploring 

 the phenomena of the universe. Whatever may have been the ap- 

 prehensions which some may have entertained formerly, the event 

 has proved that these new institutions have in no degree interfered 

 with the reputation and usefulness of that from which they derived 

 their origin. Indeed, without such fellow-labourers as these it is 

 difficult to understand how, in the present state of knowledge, the 

 Royal Society could have met the expectations of the scientific por- 

 tion of the community. There would have been no means of record- 

 ing a vast number of valuable details, from which important con- 

 clusions may be drawn in after-times. At the same time, we need 



