GRANT FOR SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATIONS 283 



the Council, on their own initiative, added the further Rule: 'That no 

 proposition or application involving a Grant to an existing Member of the 

 Committee be entertained/ At the next meeting it was reported that two 

 Members of the Government Fund Committee had resigned their seats, as they 

 intended to make applications ; and that as one of them was an ex-offido 

 Member, the Education Department had been consulted as to the manner in 

 which the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education would wish the 

 place of a Member ex-officio who resigned to be supplied. 



The Secretary of the Department, in reply, while indicating the way in 

 which this should be done, stated that their Lordships trusted that this self- 

 denying ordinance had not been adopted under any misapprehension of their 

 own views or wishes. ' They desire, it may be clearly understood, that they 

 had no wish to impose such a rule as that stated in your letter. On the 

 contrary while fully appreciating the motives which probably induced the 

 Royal Society to impose it they cannot but express the regret which they 

 would feel if it should lead to the loss of the services of some of the most 

 active and distinguished men of science in aid of the distribution of a Grant 

 which, being of a new and tentative character, peculiarly requires the support 

 of those in whose judgement and knowledge the country would place the 

 greatest reliance."" The rule in question was not, however, at that time 

 reversed. 



The assignments recommended were each year submitted to the Science and 

 Art Department for approval, and the question of the nature of the vouchers 

 to be rendered having been raised, it was decided that 'the receipt of the 

 gentlemen to whom the payments are made will be accepted as a sufficient 

 voucher, without receipts for all the details of the expenditure \ 



In the following year (1878) a difficulty began to be experienced by the 

 Department in ascertaining when the investigations were completed, and when 

 the instruments used in the investigations should be called in, and a letter 

 was addressed to the Royal Society upon the subject. A circular was in 

 consequence drawn up by the Society, requesting all who had received Grants 

 to give account of their instruments, and the information thus obtained was 

 communicated to the Department. The process of obtaining full and accurate 

 account of instruments, and the question of when to call them in, have always 

 been matters of some difficulty, which of late have been somewhat more 

 successfully met by an annual return, which every grantee is required to 

 make. 



The Fund of ^4,000 a year (which had hitherto run concurrently with the 

 Government Grant of dfi'ljOOO) having been initiated as a five years 1 experiment, 

 a letter was addressed early in 1881 by the Science and Art Department to 

 the Secretary of the Royal Society reminding him that the five years would 

 soon come to an end, and asking for a Report upon the results of the 

 experiment. A ' Report by the President and Council ' was accordingly drawn 



