230 Presidentship of Sir Joseph Banks 1808 



as the author of an account of his visit to China and South 

 Africa. He received in 1804 an appointment in the secre- 

 tarial department of the Admiralty, and for forty years he 

 continued to serve in that branch of the public service, 

 becoming eventually chief secretary and devoting his whole 

 energies to the duties of his office. But he took keen in- 

 terest in naval and geographical questions outside strictly 

 official lines. To him was due the first proposal that the 

 Admiralty should endeavour to discover the much discussed 

 North-west Passage, and this proposal opened the way for 

 the long series of Arctic and Antarctic voyages of discovery. 

 Barrow was a prolific writer of articles and reviews. 1 To 

 members of the Royal Society Club his volume of " Sketches 

 of the Royal Society and Royal Society Club " is of special 

 interest, with its personal impressions of some of the more 

 eminent of the members. He died in 1848 at the age of 

 eighty-four. 



John Rennie (F.R.S. 1798), an accomplished civil and 

 mechanical engineer who gained a wide reputation as a 

 constructor of canals and bridges. London Bridge and 

 Waterloo Bridge are examples of his taste and skill in 

 architectural design. He likewise built the great break- 

 water at Plymouth. The public respect entertained for 

 him was shown in 1821 when he died ; he was buried in 

 St. Paul's Cathedral. 



Sir James Hall, Bart I, of Dunglass, has been already 

 referred to as a frequent guest of the Club of which he now 

 became a member. When he found that Hutton would 

 not countenance his experiments in proof of some of the 

 disputed parts of that great master's Theory of the Earth, 

 he laid aside the efforts which he was disposed to make 

 in that direction. But after Hutton died in 1797 he 

 took up the subject again, and by a series of ingeniously 

 devised experiments not only confirmed Hutton's asser- 



1 It is said that Mr. Murray his publisher surprised him one day by 

 presenting him with ten portly and handsomely-bound volumes containing 

 Essays of his own composition, selected from the Quarterly Review, and 

 comprising at least one-fourth part of that periodical, as it then existed. 

 Barrow's Sketches of the Royal Society, 1849, p. 211. 



