
1904.] Anniwersary Address by Sir William Huggins. 9 
hopelessly dispersed among the thousands of specimens which crowd the 
halls of our National Museum. Some specimens, however, in comparative 
anatomy, preserved in the Museum of the College of Surgeons, are duly 
entered in the catalogue as having belonged originally to the Royal Society’s 
Muséum. 
Besides the grant of apartments in Somerset House, and subsequently in 
Burlington House, the Society has received no pecuniary support from 
Government, nor assistance of any kind, with one exception to be mentioned 
further on, beyond the grant by Charles II. shortly after its incorporation, 
of Chelsea College and the lands appertaining to it; a gift which proved 
much less valuable than appeared from the parchments. Claimants at once 
came forward for portions of the estate, and the property was in so unsettled 
a state as to title, and so much out of repair, that after much money had 
been spent on repairing the College and great exertions made in vain to 
procure a tenant, the President was authorised to sell the estate to the King 
for the sum of £1,300; the Council voting their thanks to him for “ thus 
disposing of a property which was a source of continual annoyance and 
trouble to them.” To the extent of this sum the Society’s funds were 
enriched by the royal gift. 
The grants of £4,000 and £1,000 now received annually by the Royal 
Society from the Government are not applicable to its own needs, but are 
placed in its hands in trust for grants in aid of the prosecution of 
scientific research, and of the publication of scientific papers; indeed, with 
the exception of part of the publication grant, are so far from being of the 
nature of a State bounty, that the careful administration of these grants 
brings no light burden upon the Society. 
It may not be generally known that the Royal Society just missed 
becoming a richly-endowed Society. Charles II.’s interest in the young 
Society did not end with the grant of a Charter of Incorporation, for in 1662 
he addressed a letter, written with his own hand, to the Duke of Ormonde, 
then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, recommending the Royal Society for a 
“liberal contribution from the adventurers and officers of Ireland for the 
. better encouragement of them in their designs.” ‘That is to say, in the new 
settlement in that country, on the Restoration, of the confiscated estates of 
such persons as by the King’s declaration were disqualified. The Royal 
Society had but a poor chance, notwithstanding the King’s letter, of coming 
in for a portion of these so-called “ fractions,’ when so many high families 
were cheated of their rights, and the Duke’s own estates, through his 
methods of adjudication, increased from £7,000 to £80,000 per annum. Sir 
