ii6 



NATURE 



[Dec. 5, 1889 



T/IE ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE 

 ROYAL SOCIETY. 



f~)N Saturday last, St. Andrew's Day, the Royal Society held 

 ^^ its anniversary meeting. The President read the anni- 

 versary address, a copy of which has not yet reached us. The 

 medals were then presented as follows : the Copley Medal to 

 the Rev. Dr. Salmon (received by Sir R. S. Ball) ; the Davy 

 Medal to Dr. Perkin ; a Royal Medal to Dr. Gaskell ; and a 

 Royal Medal to Prof. Thorpe. The Society next proceeded to 

 ■elect the Officers and Council for the ensuing year. The selected 

 names we have already published. 



In the evening the Fellows and their friends dined together at 

 the Whitehall Rooms, Hotel Metropole, the President in the 

 chair. Over two hundred Fellows and guests were present. 



The toast of "The Royal Society" was proposed by the 

 Speaker of the House of Commons. He said : — Sir George 

 Stokes and Gentlemen, — If I thought the audience whom 

 I have the honour to address, took the same view as I do 

 of my own want of qualifications for proposing this toast, I think 

 I should at once sit down ; but it is because I trust to your 

 generous forbearance for a few moments that I ask you to allow 

 «ie to propose a toast which needs no advocacy of mine, the 

 toast of the Royal Society. I suppose the reason why your 

 President has selected me to propose this toast is owing to the 

 fact of the official position that I hold in the House of Commons, 

 and also partly owing to the fact that the holder of one chair has 

 been willing to pay a compliment to the holder of another. 

 There are very few members of the House of Commons, I 

 believe, who are entitled to put three letters to their name to 

 indicate membership of your Society. I omit those Privy Coun- 

 cillors who, I believe, by virtue of their office, have a claim to 

 be looked upon as members of this Society. I am speaking now 

 of the strictly scientific men, and I believe I could number the 

 strictly scientific members of the House of Commons who are 

 members of the Royal Society on the fingers of one hand. But 

 I may say that those members of the House of Commons make 

 up for their numerical weakness by the qualities they disolay, 

 the high place they have filled, by their pre-eminence in debate, 

 and by the records they have left upon the Statute-book of the 

 country. It may be said that five members is a small infusion 

 to leaven the whole lump of the House of Commons, and I am 

 very conscious that scientific gentlemen may regard at times with 

 a feeling of displeasure, if not with a more contemptuous feeling, 

 some of our modes of procedure and some of our habits of 

 thought in the House of Commons. You may think that we do 

 not display that calmness of judgment, that patient investigation 

 of detail, which characterize the scientific mind. You may think 

 that we import into our discussions too muchof a very unscientific 

 heat, and that we are diverted from our objects by a great many 

 cross-currents of prejudice and of party. However that may be, 

 Sir, I believe that the object that you and we have in view 

 is the same. The great historian Hume, speaking of the 

 inception of this Society, said that it was the part of 

 scientific men to lift the veil from the mysteries of 

 Nature. It is a humbler function which the House of 

 Commons has to discharge — to solve the great social and 

 political questions of the day. But the object of both is the 

 same, the attainment of truth, and, by whatever means we can 

 attain that object, that object ought to be the main purpose of 

 our lives, I believe I am right in saying this Society owes its 

 inception and its origin to the University of Oxford. In these 

 later days it owes a debt to the great sister University, in the 

 fact that that University has sent to the chair of your Society a 

 gentleman who combines in his own person, not for the first 

 time, the functions of a Professor, of a member of the University 

 of Cambridge, and of President of this great scientific body. 

 Sir, I am very loth, indeed, to trespass any longer upon your 

 time. I have no claim whatever to do so. I will only very 

 humbly express my views. My own individual opinion is worth- 

 less and insignificant ; but possibly invested for a few moments 

 with a representative character, and speaking for the House of 

 Commons, and that great public who are behind it, I would say 

 that the public of the present day regard not only with that 

 vague astonishment, which they might well do, the great achieve- 

 ments of science, but they look with admiration upon the great 

 men who have illustrated the history of your Society, and they 

 see in that very lengthened list one of the greatest tributes to the 

 greatness of their country. I do, Sir, very much feel the imper- 

 fection with which I have addressed to you these few words. 



But if I have said that the scientific mind is needed in the House 

 of Commons, I will also say this, that the House of Commons 

 has in these days to face not only great political problems, but 

 some of those questions which are surging up and coming ever 

 more to the front, I mean the great social problems — problems 

 connected with the aggregation of vast multitudes in towns, 

 problems connected with the question how to make the lot of 

 the poor happier, how to make it easier for men to support a life 

 of continuous labour, how, in short, to sweeten life, and to make 

 that toil which falls upon us all lighter to the poor with some ray 

 of hope, and easier with some degree of comfort and con- 

 venience. But it is to science that the public must look for aid 

 in solving these questions. \o\i have done much already, but 

 you will add a still nobler title to the admiration of the world if 

 you deal with these subjects, as I am sure you will, in such a 

 manner as to make it impossible for the practical politician to 

 separate himself from the nobler follower of science. It is with 

 a very deep sense of the value of this Society and of the feeling 

 which is abroad with regard to it, that I beg to propose to you 

 — and I thank you most cordially for the toleration with which 

 you have listened to my few remarks — the toast of " The Royal 

 Society." 



In response, the President said : — My Lords and Gentlemen, 

 — On behalf of the Society which I have the honour to represent 

 on this occasion, I beg to return our thanks for the honour you 

 have done us in drinking the toast. This Society is by far the 

 oldest scientific Society in the Kingdom, but it cannot for a 

 moment compare in antiquity with that other institution over 

 which the Speaker presides. Our aims are of course naturally 

 very different, and our modes of procedure are different too. We 

 have, as the other House has, discussions in our body, but our 

 discussions are usually carried on with calmness, and we en- 

 deavour — those of us who pursue different branches of science 

 — to assist one another. I do not think that that is always the 

 case in the other Society. Perhaps there is nowadays at times 

 something akin to obslruction rather than assistance. However, 

 in order that truth may be elicited, it is necessary that there 

 should be contact between mind and mind, and contact some- 

 times produces severance. It is better that that contact should 

 take place in order that we should understand one another. Our 

 Society does not exactly deal with social problems such as the 

 Speaker has alluded to, still there are many cases in which ques- 

 tions of great interest to the bulk of the population are capable 

 of being illuminated by scientific researches. To take one re- 

 markable example which has been brought prominently before 

 us. Let us consider the investigations, so important in their 

 results, so purely scientific in inception, which have been carried 

 on by M. Pasteur in France, As the result of a long series of scien- 

 tific experiments, he has now succeeded in protecting in a great 

 majority of instances those persons who have been so unfortunate 

 as to have been bitten. by rabid animals from that terrible disease 

 which ordinarily follows in the wake. His merits in that respect 

 have been duly acknowledged in this country. We know that 

 recently, within the course of the present year, the Lord Mayor 

 called a meeting at the Mansion House to make some recogni- 

 tion on the part of this country of the great debt which we owe 

 to M. Pasteur for those researches. I mention that as one, 

 but it is only one, of many instances in which great social 

 advantages have accrued from purely scientific investigation. 

 I trust that harmony will long continue to exist between the 

 Society which I have the honour to represent, and that 

 which the Speaker represents. I can say this much — that, 

 whatever Government may have been in power, there have 

 frequently been applications made to the Royal Society lor ad- 

 vice on some purely scientific questions on which the Cabinet of 

 the day did not feel that they had the requisite knowledge to 

 pronounce an opinion ; and this I must say, that the Royal 

 Society has freely given the best of their knowledge on these 

 subjects to the Government of the day, without any considera- 

 tion of what the politics of that Government might be. I 

 trust that this will ever continue to be the case, and that the 

 Royal Society may go on in a peaceful way doing the duties 

 which belong to it, and that the country may reap the benefits 

 resulting therefrom. 



Responding for the toast of "The Medallists," proposed by 

 the President, Prof. Thorpe said : — Mr. President, my Lords, 

 and Gentlemen, — We must all regret, I am sure, that Dr. 

 Salmon's duties as Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, should 

 have prevented him from being present amongst us to-day to 

 receive the Copley Medal in person and to respond to the toas 



