Record of the Royal Society. 



five years' experiment, a letter was addressed early in 1881 by the 

 Science and Art Department to the Secretary of the Royal Society 

 reminding him that the five years would soon come to an end, and 

 asking for a Report upon the results of the experiment. A " Report 

 by the President and Council " was accordingly drawn up, in which, 

 after reciting the constitution and Regulations of the Fund, they 

 furnished a table of the five years' Grants, with the following totals 

 for the whole period : 



Number of Applications, 417. 

 Total Amount applied for, 50,401. 

 Number of Applications recommended, 190. 

 Amount for Personal Allowance, 7,800. 

 Amount for Non- Personal Expenses, 11,800. 

 Number of Grants above 100, 98. 

 below 100, 92. 



The report suggests that if unused balances, instead of reverting* 

 to the Treasury, "could be reserved and kept in hand, provision 

 might be made for some larger purposes than those to which the 

 Fund has hitherto been devoted;" and with respect to personal 

 grants, while it does not suggest that these should be entirely discon- 

 tinued, it does not recommend " the present method of administering 

 them." Some correspondence between the Treasury, the Committee 

 of Council on Education, and the Royal Society ensued, and it was 

 finally agreed (March, 1882), (1) that the Grant, of 1000, which 

 had hitherto been provided under the Vote for Learned Societies, 

 should be discontinued; (2) that the 4000 which had for the 

 previous five years been provided under the Vote for the Science and 

 Art Department should be replaced by a like sum " as a Grant in 

 aid of the Royal Society;" (3) that this Grant should be managed 

 by a reconstituted Government Grant Committee, and should be 

 " primarily applicable to non-personal payments," but that the Com- 

 mittee should be "at liberty to recomo end occasional personal pay- 

 ments from it, which, however, would only be made with the express 

 sanction of the Treasury, obtained in every case; " (4) that accounts 

 and vouchers of the expenditure should be rendered as in the case 

 of the Grant for Meteorological purposes, the money being issued 

 by the Treasury "only upon satisfactory evidence that previous 

 grants had been spent to a sufficient extent, and that no excessive 

 balance was being accumulated over a series of years." 



In the correspondence concerning details which followed this 

 general arrangement the Council again insisted, as they had clone in 

 1855, that the Grant was not a Grant to the R >yal Society, but to 

 Science. " With regard to the title under which the Vote is pro- 

 posed, to be made," wrote the President, " inasmuch as the Society 



