494 



NATURE 



[March 27, 1902 



The office of foreign secretary was created in 1723. 

 Of the eight appointed down to 1772, four were doctors 

 of medicine, and they were selected possibly for the 

 same reason as their colleagues among the secretaries. 

 Maty, who was elected in 1772, was the assistant 

 librarian in the liritish Museum. 



The enormously wide area of knowledge from which 

 the officers of the Society were drawn during the first 

 century is in sharp antithesis to the narrow ground of 

 award of the Copley medal, which was first conferred in 

 1731. The grant of this medal is limited to the author 

 of the most important discovery or contribution to science 

 by e.xperiment or otherwise ; and the greater the diver- 

 gence between the officers' and Copley medallists' lists, 

 the less, naturally, was the limitation of the Fellowship 

 to those interested alone in experiment or observation. 



We next come to the Fellows of the Society. The 

 following lists are based upon a rapid reconnaissance of 

 those who occur early in the alphabetical order, using 

 Hole's "Brief Biographical Dictionary" as a means of 

 determining their identity. The names of many Fellows 

 are absent from Hole, and there are some incertitudes, 

 besides which Hole's definitions are very terse. The 

 lists, however, are given for what they are worth ; and 

 there can be little doubt that they will soon be replaced 

 by complete and authoritative lists officially compiled. 

 It is important that the Lords of the Privy Council 

 should possess such documents to assist them in the 

 important inquiry with which they are charged ; and we 

 may hope that this eagerness to possess is only equalled 

 by the anxiety of the Royal Society to provide them if 

 their compilation be in the interests of truth :-- 



Archaeologists and Aiili- 

 quarians, 



Ames, Josti 1743 



Amyot, Thos 1 824 



Ashmole, Elias 1663 



Astle.T 1766 



Ayloffe, J 1731 



Baker, G 1762 



Brander, G 1754 



Bridges, J 1708 



Churchill, Winston ... 1664 



Gale, R 1718 



Gale, T 1677 



IVriUrs. 



Askew, Ant 1749 



Barrington. Daines 1767 



Bathurst, Ralph 1663 



Becket, VVm 1718 



Bentley, R 1695 



Birkenhead, J 1663 



Kowlden, T 1781 



Brocklesby, R 1746 



Brown, R 1811 



Bruce, J 1791 



Burnet, T 1748 



Burney, C. (Music) .. 1773 



Cadogan, W 1752 



Chandler, J 1734 



Edgeworth, R. L 1781 



Egerton, F. H 1781 



Farmer, R 1791 



Green, T 1798 



Historians, 



Abel, Clarke 1S19 



Barnes, Joshua 1710 



Bates, G 1663 



Beaufort, Louis de 1746 



Bernard, C 1696 



Birch, T 1734 



Clarke, J. G 1792 



Coxe, W 17S2 



Duclos, C 1764 



Edwards, B 1794 



Ellis, G. A 1816 



Gillies, J 1789 



Philologists. 



Colebrooke, H. T 1816 



Dickenson, E 1677 



Poets. 



Akenside, Mark 1753 



Browne, J. H 1749 



Byron, Lord 1816 



Denham 1663 



Dryden, J 1663 



Ellis, G 1797 



Travellers. 



Bruce, James 1776 



Brydone, P 1773 



Carteret, I' 1664 



Chardin, J 1682 



Lawyers. 



Adair, James 1788 



Aland, J. F 1711 



Arden, R. P 178S 



Dalrymple, J 1796 



Although the matter has not as yet been inquired into, 

 there is already ample evidence that the foreign members 

 were selected with the same catholicity as the ordinary 

 Fellows. Thus Sorbiiire, an eminent "French littt'ra/cur, 

 was elected in 1663 (the first year) ; the Italian historian 

 Gregorio Leti was elected in 168 1 ; and the French 

 historian Michael Le X'assor in 170 1. 

 : It does not seem possible that any unprejudiced mind, 



NO. 1691, VOL. 65] 



after a perusal of the above statements, limited though 

 they are to a point of time, and, in the case of the Fellows, 

 to a few letters of the alphabet, and inaccurate as they 

 may well be here and there, can deny that the reconnais- 

 sance affords valuable evidence that the action of the 

 Royal Society for the first century after it had received 

 its charters was as broad as the charters themselves. 

 The Society tried to do, and succeeded in doing, the 

 duty which the charters imposed upon it. 



We learn from the above statements that for the 

 period over which my hasty inquiry has gone, Britain 

 possessed a general organisation of learning as complete, 

 though not so detailed, as that of the Institute of France 

 or any other foreign academy to-day. King Charles II. 

 had, in fact, in his charters, and the Royal Society had, 

 in fact, in its action upon them, anticipated the work of 

 Napoleon by very nearly a century and a half; the 

 portals of the Royal Society and of the Institute of 

 France were equally wide, and wide enouyh to admit 

 the most illustrious men produced in each country. 



If I have erred in any way in reading the facts or in 

 drawing conclusions from them, I sincerely trust that 

 someone with more leisure and knowledge than I will 

 discover where I have gone wrong and at once put the 

 matter right. I am the more anxious that this should 

 be done because I gather from the petition of the Royal 

 Society Council to King Edward \T I., which was printed 

 in the Times of February 27, that the condition of things 

 which the facts reveal is either unknown to the Council 

 or regarded by them as a matter not worth mentioning. 



In that petition His Majesty is informed that the 

 President and Council ate of opinion that the studies 

 which it has been shown were fully provided for by King 

 Charles II. 's charters to the Royal Society, and "taken 

 care of" for, at all events, the first century to which my 

 inquiry was limited, "ought to be taken care of by some 

 academic organisation, and that this should be effected, 

 not by the Royal Society taking charge of these studies, 

 but by the establishment of some other body." 



I submit. Sir, that the view that a complete inquiry 

 should be made before any step be taken towards 

 creating a new body to do what the charters of King 

 Charles II. enjoined and empowered the Royal Society 

 to undertake is vastly strengthened by the facts now 

 brought to light, which show us what the Royal Society 

 actually did. 



This inquiry was thus referred to in the petition to the 

 King, dated February 14, which was signed by many 

 eminent representatives of the intellectual, industrial and 

 other forces of the Kingdom : — 



We Your Petitioners humbly pray that \o\\j Majesty may be 

 graciously pleased to cause an inquiry 10 be made with a view 

 of instiluting a general and formal organisation of all the studies 

 depending upon scientific method now carried on similar to that 

 inaugurated for the philosophical studies of the seventeenth 

 century by the charters of His Majesty King Charles II. 

 I, am. Sir, 



S'our obedient servant, 



NORM.XK LOCKVER. 

 Athenaum Club, March 11. 



ANNOUNCEMENT OF NEW MAMMALIAN 

 REMAINS FROM EGYPT. 



THE discovery of ancestral Proboscidean and other re- 

 markable mammalian forms in the Egyptian desert 

 has already been noticed in N.vti'RK (vol. Ixiv. p. 5S2). Dr. 

 C. W. Andrews's preliminary descriptions of the remains 

 show that the deposits are of deep interest to paheon- 

 tologists and other students of mammalian morphology 

 and distribution. Mr. H. J. L. Beadnell now announces, 

 in a pamphlet of two pages of text, illustrated by si.\ 

 plates, that explorations of the desert bounding the 



