8 Proceedings of the Eoyal Physical Society. 



In 1796, the American Physical Society cast in its lot with the 

 newly chartered Society. Afterwards in 1799, it was also joined 

 by the Hibernian Society, and in 1802, by the Chemical Society. 

 The Natural History Society joined in 1812, and on this 

 union, James Edward Smith (the father of English Botany), 

 Henry Brougham (afterwards Lord Brougham), and James 

 Macintosh (afterwards Sir James Macintosh), were elected 

 honorary members of the Eoyal Physical, having been formerly 

 ordinary of the Natural History Society, And it may be here 

 mentioned that amongst the manuscript dissertations of the 

 latter Society still extant, there will be found one or more of 

 the juvenile performances of the late learned and versatile 

 Lord Chancellor Brougham. Another amalgamation or rather 

 absorption was with the Didactic Society in 1813, and the 

 last took place with the Wernerian in 1858. 



During the first half-century of its existence, the Society 

 seems to have had a strong medical complexion, or rather 

 constitution, its chair being filled exclusively by graduates in 

 medicine, and its literary shelves loaded with medical treatises 

 and theses. Thus constituted, the Society was in its member- 

 ship always more of an erratic than of a local character, and 

 every new session showed a remarkable succession of new 

 faces and the absence of old and familiar ones. This is easily 

 accounted for, because the members being mostly medical 

 students, and who having finished their studies and taken 

 their degrees or licences, as the case might be, left the 

 metropolis for the provinces, or to go abroad, in order to pro- 

 secute the real business of life. After the year 1827, how- 

 ever, an improvement in every way more favourable to the 

 best interests of the Society began to take place by the 

 gradual introduction of resident members of cultivated and 

 confirmed scientific tastes, and which is characteristic of its 

 aspect at the present day. 



For this interesting description of the origin and subse- 

 quent history of the Ptoyal Physical Society, I am indebted 

 to my esteemed friend, Mr David Grieve, who joined the 

 Society in the year 1828, when a student attending the law 

 and philosophy classes at the University of Edinburgh. In 

 a MS. essay which he kindly placed at my disposal, he de- 



