316 Memoir of Charles Car dale Babington. 



"The Club is not performing its original functions, nor is 

 it even a social meeting of those interested in Natural Science. 

 The pi-esent members do not think it worth while to act as 

 the early members did : viz., to look upon the meetings of 

 the Ray Club as engagements, and not accept invitations to 

 parties on those days. If it is likely that this is to continue, 

 and I fear that that is the case, it seems to me that the 

 Club has run its course. The old members can look back 

 upon the time when important discoveries in science were 

 mentioned at its meetings before they had been known to 

 the scientific public elsewhere, or even here. Now nothing 

 of the kind takes place, or is expected." .... 



" The admission of associates was for a time a very 

 valuable addition to the Club, and to be elected as such 

 was an object of ambition to many deserving and diligent 

 students; but for many years the meetings have not proved 

 interesting to them, and therefore very few of them 

 attend." .... 



" I have now .... been, I may venture to say, the 

 most regular attendant at its meetings for the Lmg period 

 of fifty years ; and hence seen its great usefulness in its 



earlier period, and its more recent decline But 



whatever befalls our Club, let us beware lest luxury and 

 self-indulgence take the place of the learning, science, and 

 abnegation of self, which were so remarkably present in 

 the great men of the recently departed generation of the 

 University." 



These lessons are enforced by lists, with biographical notes, 

 of former and present members and associates. Let us cull 

 a few names. Among original members — C. C. Babington, 

 Sir G. E. Paget, John Ball, F.R.S. ; the later recruits — 

 Professor Adam Sedgwick, Sir G. G. Stokes, J. 0. Adams, 

 A. Newton, William Clark, James Gumming, W. H. Miller, 

 F. J. A. Hort, G. D. Liveing, Sir G. M. Humphry, F. M. 

 Balfour, Churchill Babington, T. M. Hughes, J. E. Maxwell, 

 Sir A. W. Franks, E. B. Clifton, G. R. Crotch. Of these. 

 Professor Sedgwick and Adams perhaps stood nearest to 

 Babington ; their engraved portraits adorned his dining- 

 room, with those of Bishops Lightfoot and Westcott. 



The functions of these Cambridge societies, it is pleaded, 

 are now swallowed up by London. Babington would retort. 



