THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES 



going plan of consolidation with the Royal Society, the 

 following Resolution was carried : " That any proposition 

 tending to render this Society dependent upon or sub- 

 servient to any other Society does not correspond with 

 the conception this meeting entertains of the original 

 principles upon which the Geological Society was founded. 

 That the propositions communicated by the Right Hon- 

 ourable Charles Greville, having a direct tendency to 

 render this Society dependent upon and subservient to 

 the Royal Society, are inadmissible." 



The scientific world, as well as the Geological Society 

 itself, have good reason to rejoice over the wise and far- 

 seeing policy of its founders and original members, when 

 they decided to leave the young Society free to grow and 

 to develop its powers untrammelled by any obligations 

 to any other body, a course which the past progress of 

 the Society, the eminent services which it has now for 

 nearly a century rendered to the promotion of Natural 

 Knowledge, and the scientific distinction and the wide 

 influence which it possesses to-day, in the fullest degree 

 justify and confirm. 



History repeats itself. Nearly ninety years later the 

 question of the relation of the special Societies to the Royal 

 Society, which had been raised and discussed at the time 

 of the institution of the Geological Society, was again 

 brought forward as one urgently needing consideration, in 

 consequence of the large and increasing number and im- 

 portance of the special Societies which had risen up about 



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