372 Presidentship of Lord Wrottesley 1855 



Treasurer, R. H. Scott, which, enumerating all the archives 

 of the Club that had just been deposited at the rooms of 

 the Royal Society in Burlington House, expressly affirms 

 that of the interval from June 28th 1855 to November 2Oth 

 1879 no dinner registers were then extant among the docu- 

 ments belonging to the Club. A letter has now been found 

 among these documents, written by Sir George H. Richards 

 (who was Treasurer from June 1878 till June 1888) to Robert 

 H. Scott, who was elected early in 1885 to act as Treasurer 

 in conjunction with him. The letter is dated 3oth March, 

 but without indication of the year. It was probably written 

 about the time when Sir George resigned office and handed 

 over all the documents to R. H. Scott, who then became 

 senior Treasurer. It states that the writer was aware that 

 there was a gap in the records, but that the break existed 

 when the documents passed into his hands, and that the 

 box and its contents were handed over by him just as he 

 received them. It is thus fairly certain that the missing 

 volumes were taken away some time before June 1878. 



We are thus deprived of the chronicle of the weekly 

 social gatherings of the Club, and the names of its guests 

 for nearly a quarter of last century. Fortunately the Minutes 

 of the Anniversary Meetings, at which almost all the adminis- 

 trative business of the Club was transacted, have been 

 preserved. On these alone we have to rely in following 

 the story of the Club during an eventful series of years 

 when some of the members were taking a prominent part 

 in the onward march of science, and when, among other 

 conquests, the doctrine of evolution was first applied on 

 a basis of scientific observation to the history of life upon 

 this planet. 



1856. At the written request of seven members a special 

 meeting of the Club was held on March 6th 1856. It was 

 attended by twenty members and Colonel Sabine took the 

 chair. Sir Roderick Murchison moved and Sir Benjamin 

 Brodie seconded the following resolution : " That the Royal 

 Society Club shall continue to meet every week as usual, 

 except on the third Thursday of each Calendar month during 



