364 Presidentship of the Earl of Rosse 1853 



in his hands a balance of i 6s. nd. The contribution for 

 the succeeding year was fixed at two pounds. 



No vacancies were announced either from death or non- 

 attendance. 



It was resolved that henceforth, during the months in 

 which the meetings of the Royal Society were held, the 

 dinners of the Club should be put on the table at six o'clock 

 precisely, without waiting for further orders. 



On November 3oth at the election of the Council of the 

 Royal Society, Thomas Bell resigned his Secretaryship and 

 William Sharpey, M.D., was elected in his stead. Dr. 

 Sharpey thus became entitled to take his place as an ex- 

 qfficio member of the Club without being put to the ballot. 

 Accordingly at the next meeting of the Club, his predecessor 

 introduced him and formally proposed him for election. 

 The proposal, supported by Colonel Sabine, was unanimously 

 adopted. 



Dr. Sharpey, one of the most genial and attractive mem- 

 bers the Club ever possessed, studied medicine at Edinburgh 

 and took his degree of M.D. there. But instead of entering 

 upon the practice of the profession he had chosen, he went 

 abroad in 1827, studied for the second time in Paris, and 

 thereafter entered on a long pedestrian tour, in the course 

 of which he spent three months in Switzerland, moved thence 

 into Italy, passed the winter in Rome, Naples, and the 

 Central provinces, returning by Bologna and Padua to 

 Innspruck, and spending the summer in Austria. He finally 

 reached Berlin in August, and there for nine months he gave 

 his whole time to the study of the human body. These 

 early foreign journeys, made in large measure on foot, 

 formed part of his education, and were the source of much 

 of the charm of his talk. With his knapsack on his back, 

 picking up acquaintance with fellow-travellers as he went 

 and mixing in friendly converse with the natives, he stored 

 up in his tenacious memory a fund of observation, anecdote, 

 and incident which served to enliven many an evening at 

 the Club. Returning to Edinburgh in the autumn of 1829, 

 he began there to give systematic courses of lectures in 



