246 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



A LETTER FROM SIR J. F. W. HERSCHEL, BART., TO THE EDITORS 

 OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE AND JOURNAL, IN REFER- 

 ENCE TO A RECENT COMMUNICATION TO THAT WORK OF DR. J. 

 DAVY, ETC. 



To the Editors of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal. 



Gentlemen, Collingwood, February 12, 1865. 



In reference to the communication from Dr. Davy in your Journal 

 for this month, I have only a few words to say. If the conver- 

 sation between Dr. Wollaston and Sir Humphry Davy, the pur- 

 port of which I stated in my letter to you of December 20, 1864, 

 did not take place, I must have been dreaming when I wrote down, 

 within forty-eight hours from the time of its occurrence, the state- 

 ment in question. If so, the dream has been a singularly persistent 

 one, as I still retain a clear recollection of that conversation having 

 taken place, and of its general purport, though not of the particular 

 words used ; and I have, moreover, before me the copy of a letter 

 which I wrote to Mr. Davies Gilbert on the 27th of June, 1827, 

 enclosing my formal resignation of the Secretaryship, in which the 

 opinion expressed by Dr. Wollaston on that occasion respecting the 

 President's right or courtesy of nomination is alluded to. This letter 

 I subjoin ; observing merely that, as Mr. Gilbert was present at the 

 Meeting of the 23rd of the previous November, the allusion to a 

 matter of which he was personally cognizant requires no further 

 explanation. (Copy.) 



" Devonshire Street, June 27, 1827. 



" Dear Sir, — 1 have sent a copy of the enclosed to each member 

 of the Council, the President excepted, you acting as his delegate, 

 which I hope will satisfy all points of propriety. 



" I should retire from the office of Secretary, I will confess, with 

 more regret had it not been recently pressed on my attention with 

 somewhat of a painful distinctness, that that office, by the usages of 

 the Royal Society, although elective by a majority of its members, 

 is yet regarded as being held at the nomination of the individual 

 filling the office of the President ; and had it not even been advanced 

 by an authority, to which on all occasions I feel disposed to bow with 

 just reverence, that the exercise of such power of nomination is and 

 ought to be regarded as an act of patronage on the President's part. 



" When I accepted the office of Secretary, I assuredly regarded 

 it in no such light, considering myself honoured by the election of 

 the Society to an office so important to its interests, and which had 

 been dignified by the tenure of a Hooke and a Wollaston. Although 

 I never will subscribe to a doctrine which, by lowering the dignity 

 of that office in the eyes of those who may hereafter fill it, cannot 

 but tend to abate their zeal in the discharge of its duties by leading 

 them to regard as a matter of mere routine and clerkship what 

 ought to be executed in the spirit of an important scientific trust — 

 yet I cannot but most deeply lament that such an opinion should 

 exist : — and offer it as my individual and humble, but fixed, senti- 



