2 3 8 A HISTORY OF 



one occasion Lady Rossmore was allowed to choose a 

 seat at the lectures, and the assistant secretary was 

 directed " to convey to her ladyship this resolution." 



In 1 8 1 9, Dr. Anthony Meyler delivered a course 

 of lectures on ventilation, and was invited to deliver 

 another on meteorology, when the committee of 

 chemistry and natural philosophy intervened, alleging 

 that it was not politic to interfere with the Society's 

 professors, who were fully qualified, and should be 

 invited to deliver any special lectures. Dr. Meyler 

 then wrote declining to lecture. 



Dr. Dionysius Lardner delivered a course of lectures 

 in 1826 on the steam-engine, which were afterwards 

 published, and a gold medal was voted to him, to 

 mark the Society's appreciation of them. A couple 

 of years later a committee appointed to report on the 

 best means of making the Society's lectures as useful 

 as possible to the working classes, recommended a 

 series of popular courses to be delivered in the evening. 



Lardner was born in Dublin in 1793, anc ^ m 1827 

 was elected to the chair of natural philosophy and 

 astronomy in the University of London, when he 

 commenced his Cabinet Cyclopedia. He went on a 

 lecturing tour in the United States, by which he realised 

 a very large sum of money, and in 1845 settled in 

 Paris. Lardner wrote on railways, the steam-engine, 

 natural philosophy, heat, optics, &c, and, though 

 not a great original thinker, he was a man of much 

 talent, who made the sciences popular, as no one 

 before him had done. 



In 1 8 19, a question arose as to the publication of 

 the 'Transactions, which, having appeared from 1800 

 to 1 8 10, had been discontinued, and as to the necessity 

 for reviving their appearance. The volumes consisted 

 of papers of minor importance ; extracts from writers 



