646 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



weight of the award of one of the Royal Society's medals into the 

 scale against Tyndall. It seemed to some of his friends, myself 

 among the number, that this was unfair; and a lively battle, 

 eventually decided in our favor, took place in the Council of the 

 Society. I refer to these old troubles, merely for the purpose of 

 finally removing the impression, if any such remains, that Tyn- 

 dall had anything, directly or indirectly, to do with what took 

 place. On the contrary, the two persons who were chiefly respon- 

 sible, thought it desirable that he should be absolutely ignorant 

 of what was going on ; and I can answer for it that he remained 

 so until long after, when, rummaging among my papers, I found 

 some documents which I labeled " Ashes of an old fire/' and sent 

 to him. 



Tyndall was a highly esteemed and popular member of the 

 Royal Society and always loyal toward it ; but the sensitiveness 

 to which I have alluded led him, very early in his career, to do 

 what, so far as I know, nobody had done before, nor has done 

 since. In 1853, the Society awarded one of the two royal medals 

 to him, the other recipient being Charles Darwin. Unluckily, 

 one of the members of the Council, a person of high scientific posi- 

 tion, who had wished to dispose of the medal otherwise, took his 

 defeat badly ; and, being a voluble talker, exhaled his griefs with 

 copious impropriety to all and sundry. As soon as the report of 

 this reached Tyndall's ears, he wrote a polite note to the senior 

 secretary declining the honor. Frankly, I think my friend made 

 a mistake. The Council was in no way responsible for the ill- 

 judged and, indeed, indecent proceedings of one of its members ; 

 and perhaps it is better to leave an enemy alone than to strike 

 at him with the risk of hurting one's friends. But, having thus 

 sacrificed at the altar of strict justice, I must add that, for a 

 young man starting in the world, to whom such recognition was 

 of great importance, I think it was a good sort of mistake, not 

 likely to do harm by creating too many imitators. 



As time went on, as the work became harder, and the distrac- 

 tions of life more engrossing, a few of us, who had long been in- 

 timate, found we were drifting apart; and, to counteract that 

 tendency, we agreed to dine together once a month. I think, origi- 

 nally, there was some vague notion of associating representa- 

 tives of each branch of science ; at any rate, the nine who event- 

 ually came together Mr. Busk, Dr. Frankland, Dr. Hirst, Sir 

 Joseph Hooker, Sir John Lubbock, Mr. Spencer, Mr. Spottiswoode, 

 Tyndall and myself could have managed, among us, to contrib- 

 ute most of the articles to a scientific encyclopaedia. At starting, 

 our minds were terribly exercised over the name and constitu- 

 tion of our society. As opinions on this grave matter were no less 

 numerous than the members indeed, more so we finally ac- 



