861 



conducted, as to appear to foreigners who honour them with their 

 attendance, in every respect suitable to the position our Society 

 maintains as the head of English science. 



The soirees were last season for the first time held here. In the 

 spring of 1848, during the Presidency of Lord Northampton, the Uni- 

 versity of London had been good enough to offer to lend three rooms 

 adjoining our meeting-room for the President to hold his soirees. The 

 offer was gladly accepted, and in pursuance of that arrangement in 

 the spring of 1849, the cards were issued for the first time from 

 Somerset House. Here there is ample space, and where the invita- 

 tions are so numerous there is a possibility of a larger attendance on 

 some one night than any ordinary London house could contain, 

 without the greatest inconvenience. Whether the change upon the 

 whole was pleasing to the great majority of the Society or not, I 

 have as yet been unable to ascertain ; but at the first soiree, had 

 there been any trustworthy indication of the contrary, the three re- 

 maining soirees should have been held, as formerly, at the house of 

 the President. 



I have great pleasure in informing you that I have received a com- 

 munication from the First Lord of the Treasury M^hich I have had 

 the honour of laying before the Council. Lord John Russell pro- 

 poses, that at the close of the year, the President and Council should 

 point out to the First Lord of the Treasury a limited number of per- 

 sons, to whom the grant of a reward, or of a sum to defray the cost 

 of experiments, might be of essential service. He states, that the 

 whole sum he could recommend the Crown to grant in the present 

 year is one thousand pounds, and that he cannot be certain that his 

 successor would follow the same course. 



Your Council have gladly accepted the offer made to them, as a 

 means of promoting the advance of scientific knowledge ; and they 

 have felt particularly gratified by it, as an indication of the confi- 

 dence reposed in them by Her Majesty's Government. 



It is a source of extreme regret to me that I am unable to con- 

 gratulate you on the return to his country of our long absent Fellow 

 Sir John Franklin, who,- with Captain Crozier, also one of our Fel- 

 lows, and his other gallant companions, are now spending their fifth 

 winter in the Arctic Regions. You will remember that it was partly 

 at the recommendation of the Council of the Royal Society that the 

 expedition under Sir John Franklin's command was despatched by 

 the Admiralty, for the purpose of making one more effort to solve 

 the problem of the North-West Passage, which has engaged the at- 

 tention of England for three centuries. 



We are therefore deeply interested in the successful issue of that 

 enterprise. The researches of Sir James Ross prove beyond all rea- 

 sonable doubt, that the missing expedition must have succeeded in 

 attaining the western or south-western side of Melville Island ; for as 

 Sir James Ross selected Port Leopold for his winter- quarters, which 

 is at the junction of the four great channels of Barrow Strait, Lan- 

 caster Sound, Prince Regent Inlet, and Wellington Channel, it was 

 scarcely possible for any parties from the missing expedition to have 



