1806 John Erinkley ; Wm. C. Wells; A. Carlisle 223 



College observatory at Dunsink. With much energy he 

 raised this observatory from a position of insignificance to 

 one of first importance in the study of the heavens. His 

 success was much appreciated in Ireland where he received 

 a succession of ecclesiastical preferments, ending in 1826 

 with the bishopric of Cloyne. He had been made a Fellow 

 of the Royal Society in 1803 and received the Society's 

 Copley Medal in 1824. But the duties of his bishopric, 

 to which he devoted himself with as much zeal as he had 

 shown in his astronomical career, left him little time for 

 continuing his scientific pursuits. 



William Charles Wells, who dined twice with the Club, 

 first on the invitation of the Astronomer Royal and then 

 on that of the President, was born in South Carolina of 

 Scottish parents who had emigrated to that state, and who 

 sent him to Edinburgh for his education. He studied medi- 

 cine there, also in London and Leyden, and eventually 

 settled as a medical practitioner in London. But though 

 he never acquired a large practice and was obliged to live 

 frugally, he made a name which will never be forgotten in 

 the records of meteorology, for he first solved in 1814 the 

 problem of the origin of Dew. He had already in 1793 

 been admitted to the fellowship of the Royal Society, and the 

 Society promptly testified its appreciation of his remarkable 

 " Essay on Dew " by awarding to him the Rumford Medal. 



The name of " Mr. Carlisle " on the dinner lists this year 

 and subsequently, year after year, is probably that of Anthony 

 Carlisle, a noted surgeon in his day, and most clubbable 

 man, who is remembered for some of the useful improve- 

 ments devised by him in surgical implements and methods. 

 He was knighted in 1820, and was for sixteen years Professor 

 of Anatomy at the Royal Academy. 



Another name, that of " Mr. Davy," occurs for the first 

 time in the Dinner-register of this year. On the 2Oth March 

 Sir Joseph Banks introduced the future Sir Humphry Davy 

 to the Club. Already in his 28th year he had made his 

 mark as an original observer and a popular exponent of 

 science at the Royal Institution. 



