1851 T. H. Huxley; J. H. Lefroy; Captain Fitzroy 361 



It was now an accepted practice of the Club that for 

 two weeks at Easter, two weeks at Christmas and New Year, 

 one week at Whitsuntide and one week at the date of the 

 election of Fellows at the Royal Society, there should be 

 no provision of dinners by the Club. 



Among the guests one name arrests attention Thomas 

 Henry Huxley, introduced by Thomas Bell. He was at this 

 time six-and-twenty, but had already made his mark by 

 his memoir on the Medusa family, and was this year elected 

 into the Royal Society. Captain John Henry Lefroy, who 

 dined with the Club on January gth, was an officer of the 

 Royal Artillery specially noted for his magnetic surveys at 

 St. Helena, in Canada and the boreal regions of North 

 America. At the time of his visit to this country his work 

 lay in Toronto. He had been elected into the Royal Society 

 in 1848. Joseph Napier, M.P., who was the only guest 

 on February 15, represented the Dublin University in 

 Parliament, and was a member both of the English and the 

 Irish bar. In 1858 he was appointed Lord Chancellor of 

 Ireland. He did his best to prevent the disestablishment 

 of the protestant Church of Ireland, and when that measure 

 was carried in 1869 he took an active part in the arrange- 

 ments for the reconstruction of the Church. He was created 

 a baronet in 1867 and from that year to his death in 1882 

 was Vice-Chancellor of Dublin University. On May I5th 

 Admiral Beaufort introduced Captain Fitzroy, who was then 

 known as the able commander of the Beagle in the hydro- 

 graphical survey of Patagonia and the Straits of Magellan, 

 and with whom Darwin as naturalist was enabled to carry 

 out his fruitful researches during five years of active 

 observation. He was this year elected into the Royal 

 Society, and henceforward became widely known as an 

 enterprising meteorologist. He was made chief of a Meteoro- 

 logical Department created in 1854, and he was the first to 

 institute a system of weather forecasts and storm warnings. 



It is deserving of remark that although this was the 

 year of the first Great Exhibition, when London was a centre 

 of attraction from all parts of the world, there is not the 



