408 SCIENCE OKGANISATION : SOCIETIES, ETC. 



work well on a mixed Journal, the chances are that others 

 would not/ among 'the hundreds of details that belong to 

 both, i.e. to neither.' 



[References to the subject appear in the letters from 

 November 1853. The Linnean had just elected a new president 

 in Thomas Bell, 1 who held that office for the next eight years. 

 Great things were hoped from his known administrative 

 ability and his keen desire to resuscitate the Society. Hooker 

 could recall one meeting in the old rooms in Soho Square when 

 only five members were present to support the President and 

 Secretary. The list of contributions from British botanists 

 during the last ten years compared unfavourably with those 

 made to other journals. The Secretary was chronically hard 

 up for papers ; not unnaturally, since ' for such advantages 

 can the Botanists be expected to sail in such a coal barge, 

 where zoology is little better than rats and cockroaches ? ' 

 The meetings therefore offered small attraction. ' If some- 

 thing is not done the Society will certainly fall to pieces.' But 

 * I see no prospect of anything being done till you come up, 

 and Lindley gets on the Council ! ' (To Bentham, November 

 1853.) 



However, one after another the essential reforms were 

 carried, despite temporary half-measures interposed by the 

 President in order to meet Brown's uncompromising opposi- 

 tion to every point of principle and detail, whereupon Hooker 

 exclaims, * Save me from a vacillating man of all others,' but 

 confesses afterwards, 'He is so good-natured and anxious 

 that everything should go square that it is impossible to 

 quarrel with him.' At the crucial moment, however, the 

 President backed up the reformers, pacified Brown, and finally, 

 with a rich man's liberality, guaranteed that the free distribu- 

 tion of the new Journal to all Fellows should have a fair trial, 



1 Thomas Bell (1792-1860) was distinguished as a dental surgeon and a 

 zoologist. At Guy's Hospital he was for long the only good surgeon who 

 applied scientific surgery to diseases of the teeth. He was most widely known 

 for his popular Histories of British Quadrupeds, of British Reptiles, and British 

 Stalk-eyed Grustaceae, as well as his edition of White's Selborne, a place where 

 he spent his old age, having bought White's house, The Wakes. As Secretary 

 of the Royal Society (1848-53), and as President of the Linnean Society 

 (1853-61) he did excellent administrative work. 



