252 Presidentship of Sir Joseph Banks 1817 



was so small the meeting resolved that a contribution of 

 three pounds should again be called for from each member. 

 As there were no vacancies no election took place, but the 

 names of two candidates were recorded against the next 

 voting. 



The meeting took into consideration the serious number 

 of deficiencies in the attendance during the autumn months 

 and resolved " that the meetings of the Club be suspended 

 during the ensuing months, August, September and October, 

 and resumed the first Thursday in November." 



The flow of visitors from the Continent, which had for 

 so many years been checked by the continued state of 

 war, now gradually began once more to move. This year 

 on November 6th the President was able to present to 

 the Club a remarkable trio Arago, Biot and Humboldt. 



At the time of this visit to England Francois Jean Domi- 

 nique Arago was thirty-one years of age and together with 

 Biot, who was twelve years his senior, had come here for 

 the purpose of making geodetic observations on our coasts. 

 These two eminent physicists were associated in the laborious 

 task of continuing the measurement of an arc of the meri- 

 dian from Barcelona to the Balearic Isles. They had their 

 station for some months in winter on one of the higher 

 summits of the Eastern Pyrenees, where the younger man 

 was indefatigable day and night in repairing the damage 

 done by the furious gales to which they were exposed. 

 When the principal operations had been completed he 

 crossed to Majorca, where he was taken for a spy, and after 

 going through an almost incredible series of misfortunes, 

 lasting altogether about two years, he succeeded in returning 

 to France in the summer of 1809. He was received with 

 acclaim in Paris, where the Academy of Sciences departed 

 from its regulations in order to enrol him among its mem- 

 bers, though he was still only three-and- twenty, while the 

 Emperor Napoleon named him professor at the Ecole 

 Polytechnique, where he taught in the most brilliant way. 

 His original researches lay chiefly in optics, magnetism and 

 astronomy. But his greatest contribution to the diffusion 



