I79 1 J* F. Elumenbach ; Davies Giddy (Gilbert) 195 



15 to 3, and only once rose to as many as n until the second 

 week in November, when it mounted at once to 16. To 

 promote the circulation of the wine Sir Joseph Banks pre- 

 sented to the Club this summer two pairs of bottle-coasters. 



The foreign visitors this year included Baron Scheffer, 

 Chevalier St. Michel, Baron Weltheim and Dr. Johann 

 Friedrich Blumenbach of Gottingen, the great naturalist and 

 physiologist who first placed natural history on a scientific 

 basis of comparative anatomy. At this time he was in the 

 full vigour of manhood. His renown as a craniologist was 

 gained in later years. In 1814 he was visited at Gottingen 

 by Sir Henry Holland who saw his collection of crania, then 

 the most complete in Europe, and has recorded " the energy 

 and clearness of his mind, little impaired by years. He was 

 not a phrenologist in the later sense of the term ; but he 

 saw the ethnological value of those distinctions which only 

 large and well-classified collections of crania can afford." x 



One of the English visitors was Davies Giddy (subsequently 

 Gilbert), who was destined to play a conspicuous part in 

 the Royal Society and at the Club. As a Cornish squire 

 he devoted himself to the interests of his native county in 

 which he had inherited landed property. He was elected 

 into the Royal Society on iyth November of this year, 

 six months after he had been the guest of the Club. He 

 represented first Helston and then Bodmin in the House 

 of Commons from 1804 to 1832, and proved a most assiduous 

 member, giving most of his time to public business, and 

 being universally respected for his sound sense and capacity. 

 In 1808 he married the only daughter and heiress of Thomas 

 Gilbert, and thereby came into possession of an extensive 

 estate in Sussex. He then took the name of Gilbert instead of 

 Giddy. He contributed several papers on scientific subjects 

 to the Philosophical Transactions and advocated the interests 

 of science and art in and out of parliament. In 1819 he was 

 chosen Treasurer of the Royal Society and on the resignation 

 of Sir Humphry Davy in 1827, was elected President. His 

 tastes being largely literary and antiquarian, he busied himself 

 1 Recollections, p. 118. 



