338 Presidentship of Marquess of Northampton 1843 



The meetings during the vacation were ordered to be 

 continued in the reduced number which had been in practice 

 for some years. 



The new members elected into the Club this year were 

 a considerable accession to its strength, in representatives 

 of the Navy, the Army, and the Universities. Captain 

 James Clark Ross since he was first a guest of the Club 

 had greatly increased his reputation as a skilful and success- 

 ful navigator. From 1819 to 1831 he had been engaged 

 in a succession of voyages in the Arctic regions, during 

 which he discovered the Magnetic Pole. Thereafter he took 

 part in the magnetic survey of the United Kingdom, but 

 his greatest achievement was his expedition to the Antarctic 

 regions from 1839 to 1843, from which he had not yet 

 returned when he was elected into the Club. The two 

 interesting volumes which he and his associates, Captain 

 Crozier, Joseph Hooker, and others, prepared of what they 

 saw and did in those southern climes, gave the first con- 

 nected picture of the Antarctic lands and seas, not only in 

 regard to their scenery but to their physical condition 

 and their natural history. The existence of Mount Erebus, 

 an active volcano rising amid perpetual snow and ice, so 

 near the south pole was a discovery of the first magnitude. 

 Captain Ross was elected into the Royal Society in 1828. 



Dr. William Buckland as visitor has already come before 

 the reader (pp. 261, 284) . His genial presence could not but 

 be an additional attraction at the dinners. He had been for 

 thirty years engaged at Oxford in lecturing on geology, and 

 demonstrating the principles of the science in the field to his 

 pupils. His excursions, often on horseback, were popular 

 among the undergraduates, and he had the satisfaction of 

 finding as years went by that the seed which he sowed in 

 their minds bore fruit in the production of some excellent 

 geologists. Dr. Buckland had been a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society since 1818. A few years after his entry into the 

 Club mental failure began to affect him and led to the ulti- 

 mate retirement in which he spent the last years of his life. 

 He died in 1856. 



