54 Anniversary Meeting. [Nov. 30, 



science I need say nothing here. They are known of all men, and 

 the Society showed its appreciation of their worth when it awarded 

 to him the Copley Medal in 1888. The present medal is a token of 

 the value put by the Society on the part of his scientific activity 

 bearing more directly on the biological ideas with which the name of 

 Charles Darwin will always be associated. 



All the world now knows in part, no one perhaps will ever know 

 in full, how, in the working out of his great idea, Darwin was 

 encouraged, helped, and guided by constant communion with three 

 close and faithful friends, Charles Lyell, the younger Joseph Dalton 

 Hooker, and the still younger Thomas Henry Huxley. Each repre- 

 senting more or less different branches of science, each bringing to 

 bear on the problems in hand more or less different mental charac- 

 ters, all three bore share, and were proud to bear share, in aiding the 

 birth of the "Origin of Species." Charles Lyell has long been 

 removed from us. Two years ago it was my pleasing duty to place 

 the Darwin Medal in the hands of Joseph Dalton Hooker ; that 

 pleasing duty is renewed to-day in now giving it to the last of the 

 three " who kept the bridge." 



To the world at laige, perhaps, Mr. Huxley's share in moulding the 

 thesis of "Natural Selection " is less well known than is his bold 

 unwearied exposition and defence of it after it had been made public. 

 And, indeed, a speculative trifler, revelling in problems of the " might 

 have been," would find a congenial theme in the inquiry how soon 

 what we now call " Darwinism " would have met with the acceptance 

 with which it has met, and gained the power which it has gained, 

 had it not been for the brilliant advocacy with which in its early 

 days it was expounded to all classes of men. 



That advocacy had one striking mark ; while it made or strove to 

 make clear how deep the new view went down and how far it 

 reached, it never shrank from striving to make equally clear the 

 limits beyond which it could not go. In these latter days there is 

 fear lest the view, once new but now familiar, may, through being 

 stretched farther than it will bear, seem to lose some of its real worth. 

 We may well be glad that the advocate of the " Origin of Species 

 by Natural Selection," who once bore down its foes, is still among us, 

 ready, if needs be, to " save it from its friends." 



The Statutes relating to the election of Council and Officers were 

 then read, and Professor Armstrong and Admiral Sir Erasmus 

 Ommanney having been, with the consent of the Society, nominated 

 Scrutators, *he votes of the Fellows present were taken, and the 

 following were declared duly elected as Council and Officers for the 

 ensuing year : 



