I 12 



NATURE 



[Dec. 2, 1880 



deliberate judgment whenever occasion may arise. Among such 

 subjects there is one upon which I have often heard opinion 

 expressed, and upon which opinion has always Aveighed in the 

 same direction : I allude to the period of office of those elected 

 to serve on the Council of the Society. By the terms of our 

 charter ten of the ordinary members retire every year ; and as it 

 is our custom to remove six according to seniority and four in 

 respect of least attendance, it rarely happens, although the 

 contrary is possible, that any Fellow, except those holding the 

 posts of President, Treasurer, or Secretary, should remain in 

 office more than two years. Experience, however, appears to 

 sho-\\', that for a member serving on the Council for tlie first 

 time, there is so much to learn, so many heads of business which 

 do not in general come before the Fellows at large, that his first 

 year is occupied quite as much in ascertaining his duties as in 

 actively performing them. This objection is in some degree 

 met by selecting for the ten incoming members five who have 

 served before, and five who have not so served ; but, never- 

 theless, there is usually an interval of several years between two 

 periods of office, and as a matter of fact we often lose a 

 member of Council at the moment when his advice is becoming 

 most valuable to our body. 



I am aware of the great convenience attaching to our present 

 impersonal mode of selecting the members to retire in each year, 

 and am not at present prepared to suggest any specific alteration. 

 But] the gieat confidence which the Society has, especially of 

 late years, placed in its more permanent officers, and the power 

 which naturally accrues to them from the comparatively short 

 tenure of office by the other Members of Council, appear to me 

 to be points of which the Society should not lose sight. On the 

 part of the officers I think it right to state that we are very 

 sensible both of the honour which is thus done to us and of the 

 responsibility which is thereby entailed, and that we hope never 

 to discredit the one nor to abuse the other. And having said so 

 much, we are quite willing to leave the matter in the hands of 

 the Society to be taken up whenever they see reason so to do. 



It will be in the recollection of the Fellows that the position 

 of the Royal Society in respect of the Government Fund of 

 4000/. per annum is different from that in relation to the Govern- 

 ment Grant of looo/. per annum. In the latter case the sum is 

 placed unreservedly in the hands of tire Society for promoting 

 scientific investigation, subject only to an annual report to the 

 Treasury of the disposal of it ; and, in administering it, the 

 Society has in no case applied it to the personal remuneration of 

 the applicant. In the former case the Society has been requested 

 to advise the Science and Art Department as to the distribution 

 of the grant, not only for the direct expenses of investigations, 

 but also for personal remuneration for the time expended on them, 

 whenever the circumstances and wishes of the applicant appeared 

 to render this desirable. The responsibility of this advice lies with 

 a Committee similar to that of the Government Grant, but with 

 the addition of the presidents of certain learned bodies and 

 societies, nominated for that purpose by the Government. 



The recommendations made by the Committee each year are 

 annually published in the Proceedings, so that the public will 

 have had full information as to the distribution of the grant ; 

 while the Fellows have the opportunity of seeing the nature of 

 applications made, and the extent to which it has been found 

 practicable to meet them, as recorded in tlie minutes of the 

 Council of the Society. 



One of the points which is perhaps beset with the greatest 

 difficulty is that of the so-called "personal" grants. On the 

 one hand it has been argued that it is desirable to enable the 

 man of small means to devote to research a part of his time 

 which he could not otherwise aftbrd to give ; but, on the other, 

 the question has been raised whether it be wise, even in the 

 interests of science, to encourage any one not yet of independent 

 income to interrupt the main business of his life. It is too 

 often assumed tliat a profession or a business may be v/orked at 

 half-speed,^ or may be laid down and taken up again, whenever 

 we like. But this is not so, and a profession temporarily or even 

 partially laid aside, may prove iiTecoverable ; and the temptation 

 to diverge from the dull and laborious path of business may 

 prove to have been a snare. Without proposing to exclude from 

 possible aid in some shape or other those cases where personal 

 assistance may be safely offered, it has been suggested that many 

 such cases may be practically met by grants for the employment 

 of an assistant, instead of grants to the applicant himself. 



There is another fundamental difference between the position 

 of the Government Grant of 1000/. per annum and the Govern- 



ment Fund of 4000/. per annum, which appears to me to be of 

 m.aterial importance in the interests of science. The former is 

 an absolute grant from the Treasury made to the Society for 

 scientific purposes. It may be used wholly, or in part, during 

 the year in which it is made, and the balance, if any, may be 

 carried over by the Society to the next or even to succeeding 

 years. The latter is a vote to the Science and Art Department, 

 on the disposal of which the Society is consulted. Like all other 

 similar votes, any unused balance reverts to the Treasury, and is 

 to tliat extent lost to the purpose for which it was intended. I 

 cannot help thinking that, if any such balances could be reserved 

 and kept in hand, provision might be made for some larger pur- 

 poses than those to which the fund has hitherto been devoted. 

 And, even if having this end in view, the Committee should not 

 see it; way to recommend some of the smaller applications, it 

 may be fairly questioned whether the smaller grants might not 

 find a more appropriate place among those of the Donation Fund 

 of this Society, or of the British Association, or among some oJ 

 those separate funds which, through the liberality of individuals, 

 are now growing up among the special societies. 



I am glad to record the fact that, upon the recommendation ol 

 men of science. Her Majesty has been pleased to grant pensions 

 on the Civil List to the widows of two of our late Fellows, viz., 

 to Mrs. John Allan Broun and to Mrs. Clifford. 



Last year two volumes containing a collection of the late Prof. 

 ClitTord's general lectures and essays were brought out. It is 

 hoped that during the present winter a collection of his mathe- 

 matical papers will be published. The contributions to science 

 by the late Prof. Rankin have recently been placed in the hands 

 of the public. While very sensible of the obligations under 

 which the scientific world is placed by these posthumous publi- 

 cations, I cannot refrain from alluding to our obligations, even 

 greater if possible, to those who during their lifetime are willing 

 to re-issue their own scientific memoirs, and to give us thereby 

 not only the convenience of ready access, but also the advantage 

 of their own subsequent reflections on the subjects of which they 

 have treated. And at this particular moment I desire to mention 

 more particularly the mathematical and physical papers of our 

 Senior Secretary, Prof. G. G. Stokes ; and, while expressing 

 our gratitude for the volume which has already appeared, I would 

 express also our sincere hope that another instalment from the 

 same source may shortly follow. 



Among the subjects which at one period of the late session of 

 Parliament engaged the attention of the Government was that of 

 the law relating to vaccination ; and a Bill was introduced in- 

 tended to remove some of the practical difficulties in carrying out 

 the existing law. While fully admitting the difficulties in ques- 

 tion, the remedy proposed appeared to trench so closely upon 

 the application at least of a scientific principle, and at the same 

 time to be so important in its practical aspect, that I ventured 

 (although the Council was not sitting) to consult the Presidents 

 of the Colleges of Physicians and of Surgeons, and that of the 

 Medical Council, about addressing the Government on the 

 subject. This resulted in a joint deputation to the President 

 of the Local Government Board, in which I took part as 

 President of the Royal Society. I reported this matter to the 

 Council at their first meeting after the recess, and received their 

 approbation. The Bill in question was withdrawn. 



The Royal Commission on Accidents in Coal Mines, the 

 appointment of which I mentioned in my address of last year, 

 has been occupied principally in bringing together a body of 

 valuable evidence on the causes and prevention of accidents in 

 mines generally. The Commission has also visited a number of 

 mines in which serious accidents by explosion have taken place, 

 or in whicli certain phenomena connected with the occurrence of 

 fire-damp were to be studied. They have also instituted a series 

 of experiments on the behaviour of various safety lamps in 

 mixtures of natural fire-damp and air. These experiments they 

 are about to renew during the winter. They also contemplate 

 carrying out experiments in blasting rock and coal by methods 

 which will check tlie production of flame, and which are there- 

 by calcul.ited to obviate the danger of igniting fire-damp. 



The report of the voy.age of H.M.S. Challenger, to which 

 the scientific world has been looking forward with so much 

 interest, is now so far advanced that one volume of _ the 

 "Zoological Memoirs " will appear immediately. In addition 

 to this a second volume may be expected within a year. The 

 first volume of the whole, work, "containing a short narrative 

 of the . voyage, with all necessary hydrographical details, an 

 account of the appliances and methods of observation, a mnning 



