378 Anniversary Meeting. [Nov. 30, 



pointed a Special Committee to arrange for the better accommodation 

 of the Fellows at their ordinary meetings and of their visitors at the 

 Annual Soirees. Upon the first floor a new doorway has been pro- 

 vided, which, it is hoped, will help to a freer circulation on the 

 crowded nights of our Soirees, and on the ground floor, besides the re- 

 arrangement of the meeting-room and the provision of a lecture table, 

 and additional accommodation for diagrams, a preparation room is 

 being fitted with suitable appliances for the use of those who are 

 willing to illustrate their papers by experiment. 



The generous gift of 2000 presented by our Fellow Mr. Ludwig 

 Mond, in the early part of the session, to aid the work of the ' Cata- 

 logue of Scientific Papers,' has enabled the Catalogue Committee not 

 only to carry on the current work of the Catalogue, which want of 

 funds threatened to cripple, but also to take into consideration wider 

 schemes than it was possible to contemplate before. The Committee 

 have met several times during the past session, and it is hoped that 

 the long-desired Subject Index may yet become an accomplished fact. 



The Water Research Committee have continued their labours, and 

 a Second Report on the vitality of microscopic pathogenic organisms 

 in large bodies of water, dealing with the vitality and virulence of 

 Bacillus antJiracis and its spores, the result of Messrs. Percy Frank- 

 land and Marshall Ward's researches, has been completed during the 

 past session and published in our ' Proceedings.' 



Except that additional assistants have been employed in the Cata- 

 logue Department, our staff remains unchanged. 



During the past year, in the Mathematical and Physical Section of 

 the * Philosophical Transactions,' 21 papers have been published, and 

 in the Biological Section, 10; the two sections together containing 

 a total of 1775 pages of letter-press, and 70 plates. Of the 'Proceed- 

 ings,' 12 numbers have been issued, containing 1282 pages and 

 19 plates. 



Not the least important of the scientific events of the year is the 

 publication, in the. original German and in an English translation by 

 Professor D. E. Jones, of a collection of Hertz's papers describing 

 the researches by which he was led up to the experimental demonstra- 

 tion of magnetic waves. For this work the Rumford Medal of the 

 Royal Society was delivered to Professor Hertz three years ago by 

 my predecessor, Sir George Stokes. To fully appreciate the book now 

 given to the world, we must carry our minds back to the early days 

 of the Royal Society, when Newton's ideas regarding the forces 

 which he saw to be implied in Kepler's laws of the motions of the 

 Planets and of the Moon were frequent subjects of discussion at its 

 regular meetings and at perhaps even more important non-official 

 conferences among its fellows. 



In 1684 the Senior Secretary of the Royal Society, Dr. Halley, 



