1891.] President's Address. 225 



as always, active both in the proceedings of their ordinary meetings, 

 which have been full of scientific interest, and in the conduct of the 

 important affairs committed to their Council. During the past year 

 nineteen memoirs have been published in the ' Philosophical Trans- 

 actions,' containing a total of 1020 pages and 60 plates. Of the 

 4 Proceedings,' six numbers have been issued, containing 893 pages. 

 Of the large number of papers which have been published in the 

 * Proceedings ' two-thirds are on the physics and dynamics of dead 

 matter and one-third on biological subjects. 



As stated by Sir George Stokes in his Presidential Address at the 

 last Anniversary Meeting, a revision of the -whole body of the Statutes 

 of the Royal Society had been entered upon, a Committee had 

 recently reported to the Council, and their report had been left to the 

 new Council then entering on office to take such action in the matter 

 as might be judged proper. The Council now concluding their term of 

 office have accordingly given much time to the subject, and have com- 

 pleted the work of re-enacting the Statutes with such amendments 

 as have seemed desirable. The only questions upon which there was 

 effective difference of opinion were those connected with the election 

 of Fellows, which were referred to by Sir George Stokes as having 

 elicited considerable difference of opinion in the reporting Committee. 

 The Council, after much anxious consideration, resolved to make no 

 change of the existing Statutes in this respect. 



There have been no changes during the past session in the constitu- 

 tion of the staff employed in the Offices and Library; but in the 

 Catalogue Department, two lady assistants and two copyists have 

 been engaged to work under the superintendence of Miss Chambers, 

 who succeeded in July of last year to the post rendered vacant by the 

 death of the late Mr. Holt, and who continues to give every satisfac- 

 tion in the discharge of her duties. 



In January of the present year a communication was received from 

 our Fellow Professor G. S. Brady, intimating that his brother, the 

 late Mr. Henry Bowman Brady, whose decease I have already men- 

 tioned, had bequeathed to the Society all his books and papers relating 

 to the Protozoa, with the recommendation that they should be kept 

 together as a distinct collection. In case this recommendation should 

 be adopted, a further bequest of 300 was made, the interest of 

 principal or both to be applied, at the discretion of the Council, to the 

 purchase of works on the same or kindred subjects, to be added to the 

 collection. The Council have accepted both these bequests, and a 

 case marked with an engraved plate has been set aside in the Library 

 for the accommodation of the Brady collection. 



His Excellency Robert Halliday Gunning, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., 

 who in 1887 founded certain scholarships and prizes, called the 

 Victoria Jubilee Prizes, for the promotion of original scientific work 



