heb. 14, 1884] 



NA TURE 



369 



found fi-om the Antiquaries' ^ide of the question in the recent 

 life of Henry Ersliine ; and it is al-o alluded to in Mr. Ccsmo 

 Innes' work, where a letter is quoted from the energetic Professor 

 of Greek couched in terms more forcible than philosophical. But 

 it is certainly time to bury such feuds when they come to be a 

 hundred years old. I find, from the minutes of the first 

 meeting, that the Society was of opinion that the College 

 Library was an inconvenient place for their usual meetings, and 

 a committee w as appointed to find one more suitable, apparently 

 without success, for they continued to be held in the Library 

 for twenty-tliree years, when the Society migrated to the 

 Physicians' Hall in George Street in 1807. They afterwards 

 purchased No. 40, George Street, in which the meetings were 

 held until they obtained their present rooms in the Royal Insti- 

 tution. At a subsequent meeting, held on August 4, 1783, it 

 was resolved that the Society should divide into two classes, 

 wliich should meet and deliberate separately, to be called the 

 ['hysical Class and the Literary Class, with separate office- 

 bearers. 



" The first president w as Henty, Duke of Buccleuch, who had 

 rendered great assistance in obtaining the charter. The vice- 

 presidents were the Right Hon. Henry Dundas and Sir Thomas 

 Miller, the Lord Justice-Clerk. I forbear to go over the names 

 of what may be called the original members of the Society. I 

 include in that term all who were elected within the first ten 

 years. All the members of the Philosophical were assumed 

 without ballot ; the rest, to the number of more than 100, were 

 elected by ballot, and a general invitation was made to the 

 Lords of Session to join. These were the ordinary resident 

 members. There was also a list of non-resident members, which 

 comprised nearly as many. Of the ordinary resident members 

 there is hardly a name which is not known — I might say con- 

 spicuous — in the annals of Scotland at that time. Twelve of the 

 Lords of Session accepted the invitation, including the Lord 

 President, the Lord Ju tice Clerk, and the Lord Chief Baron of 

 the day ; upwards of twenty professors, with Principal Robert- 

 son at their head ; twenly-tHO members of the bar, including 

 Sir Hay Campbell, the Lo:d Advocate, and of the-e at least 

 fourteen rose afterwards to the bench. The medical contingent 

 included Munro, CuUen, Gregoi7, and Home ; and the non- 

 resident list contained the names of the Duke of Buccleuch, the 

 Earl of Morton, the Earl of Bute, the Earl of Selkirk, Lord 

 Daer, James Steuart Mackenzie, the Lord Privy Seal, Sir George 

 Clerk Maxwell of Penicuik, Sir James Hall of Dunglass, and 

 many other familiar names. But 1 select from the list those of 

 the members on whom fell the burden of the real work ; and I 

 venture to say that no city in Europe could have brought to- 

 gether a more distinguished circle. They were — Hay Cambell, 

 Henry Dundas, Joseph Black, James Hulton, John Playfair, 

 Adam Smith, William Robertson, Dugald Stewart, Adam 

 Ferguson, Alexander Monro (secundiis), James Gregory, Henry 

 Mackenzie, Allan Maconochie, and William Miller of Glenlee. 

 I ought to add to these Sir James Hall of Dunglass, and Sir 

 George Clerk Maxwell of Penicuik, the last of whom died the 

 first year. Some of these names are European ; all are cele- 

 brated ; and these were men who, for the most part, did not 

 merely contribute the lustre of their names to the infant Associa- 

 tion, but lent the practical vigour of their great intellectual power 

 to aid in the first steps of ils progress. And very soon the im- 

 press thus stamped on the Society began to establish its reputa- 

 tion in the world, and it took no undistinguished place among 

 the learned societies of Europe. I find the names of Goethe 

 and Buffon among the original foreign members ; and although 

 the events of the next twenty years interrupted our relations with 

 the Continent, by the time the Society had completed the half- 

 century there was scarcely a distinguished savant in Europe who 

 had not joined, or been invited into, our ranks. 



" In the Physical Class were four men who rose to great posi- 

 tions in the scientific world, and to whom the Society was 

 greatly indebted for their general reputation, and fi.r the vigour 

 and efficiency with which their proceedings commenced. They 

 were James Hutton, Joseph Black, John Pla)fair, and Dugald 

 Stewart. Hutton and Black were then in the zenith of their 

 fame, and have left a strong impress on the first years of our 

 Society. I am desirous, in this review of the Society's early 

 days, to revert with gratitude and respect to the memory of one 

 whose labours on behalf of the Society were invaluable. Hutton 

 was an observer and a thinker of remarkable originality and 

 power. Black, again, was a Frenchman by birth, although his 

 parents were British, and he was nearly related both to Adam 



Smith and to Adam Ferguson. He came to Scotland when he 

 was about twelve years old, and, long before the institution of 

 the Royal Society, had risen to the front rank of Euroj-ean 

 chemists — his discoveries on pneumatic chemistry and latent 

 heat having laid the foundation of much that is valuable in 

 subsequent investigations, and opened a course of inquiry pur- 

 sued with great ability in our own Transactions by Leslie, and 

 Brewster, and Forbes." Lord Moncreiff having glanced at some 

 peculiarities of the social meetings of those days between Black, 

 Adam Smith, Hutton, and others, proceeded to speak of Play- 

 fair and Dugald Stewart, who by themselves could have raised 

 to distinction any circle to which they belonged. " Both of them 

 were men of great versatility, and, within the walls of theKojal 

 Society, capable of filling a foremost place whether in the fields 

 of abstract science or in I hose of literature or mental philosophy. 

 Dugald Stewart's contributions to the Transactions are not so 

 numerous as those of Playfair ; but no man had more influence 

 in moulding the tone and cast of thought prevalent among the 

 cultivated class of his countrymen than that most popular and 

 most eloquent instructor of youth. But no one can study these 

 volumes of the Transactions, as I have done, without feeling that, 

 for the first two decades of the existence of the Royal Society, 

 Playfair was the soul and life of the irstitution. His vei-satility 

 and power have impressed me exceedingly, high as v\as the 

 estimate I had previously formed of him. Profound and 

 transparently clear, whatever might be the topic, he bears ab .lit 

 with him a far-reaching vigour which never flags. VVhether it 

 be the origin and investigation of porisms, or the astrono uy of 

 the Brahmins, or their trigcnometrical calculations, or meteoro- 

 logical tables, or a double rainbow, nothing seems too great or 

 too small for him. 



" There are many curious and interesting by-paths, bah of 

 science and of literature, traversed in these earlier volumes. In 

 1787 Mr. Geoi-ge Wallace read a paper, which he did net inuline 

 to have printed in th-^ Transactions, which I regret, for it leialed 

 to a subject the interest of which has not ceased by the lapse 

 of nearly a century. Its title was, 'On the Causes of the 

 Disagreeablene.s and Coldness of the East Wind.' lu the 

 first volume of the Transactions a very singular problem » as 

 presented to the Society, through Mr. Adam Smith, alon;^ with 

 other learned bodies in Europe, by a Hungarian nob.'eman. 

 Count Windischgratz, and a prize was offered by him of 1000 

 ducats for the best solution of it, and 500 ducats for an approxi- 

 mation to a solution. It was a bold effort of philanthropy, for 

 its object was the abolition of lawyers for the future. The 

 problem was addressed to the learned of all nations. It was 

 couched in Latin, but was in substance this : — ' To find formulx- 

 by which any person might bind himself, or transfer any property 

 to another, horn any motive, or under any conditions, the 

 formulx to be such as should fit every possible case, ai.d be as 

 free from doubt and as little liable to controversy as the terms 

 used in mathematics.' I suppose that the prospect here held 

 out of dispensing for the future with the least popular of the 

 learned professions inclined the Society to entertain it favour- 

 ably, for they proceeded to invite solutions of the problem, and 

 three were received by them. In 1788 we find it recorded m the 

 minutes that Mr. Commissioner Smith (for so the author of the 

 'Wealth of Nations' was designated) reported the opinion of 

 the Committee that none of the three dissertations amounted to 

 a solution, or an approximation to a solution, of that problem ; 

 bnt that one of these, with a certain motto, although neither a 

 solution nor an approximation to a solution, was a work of great 

 merit ; and Mr. Fraser-Tytler was instructed to inform Count 

 Windischgratz of their opinion. Whether this meritorious dis- 

 sertation olrtained the 500 ducats or not, we are not infor.:;ied, 

 but as lawyers continue to flourish, and legal terminology to 

 produce disputes as prolifically as ever, it seems clear that the 

 author had not earned them. 



"Now that we have an Observatory on Ben Nevis, our successors 

 at the end of the next century will know accurately the conditiots 

 of the climate under which the hundred years have been spent. 

 There are, however, some details scattered over these volumes 

 which are sufficiently interestirg, although whether they show any 

 material alteration in our seasons may te doubtful. The only 

 cheeriirg fact which they disclose is that the first set of returns 

 is decidedly the most discouraging, and certainly does not support 

 the idea that the mean temperature in the olden time was higher 

 than it is now. There are two sets of returns printed in the first 

 volume of the Transactions— o\vt kept at Branxholm from 1773 

 to 1783, communicated by the Duke of Buccleuch, who was the 



