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large for their uniform kindness and support, it would be injustice 

 and ingratitude on my part were I not to return my public and 

 especial thanks to the Vice Presidents, Treasurer, Secretaries, and 

 the other Members of the Council — 



To the Vice Presidents, as well for their general services as also 

 for their kindness in supplying my place in this Chair, when I have 

 unfortunately been compelled to be absent from the state of my 

 health, or from the immediate necessity of discharging other most 

 pressing public duties. 



To the Treasurer, for his vigilant attention to the finances of the 

 Society, and to every arrangement which may in any manner tend 

 to promote the usefulness of the Institution, and increase the ac- 

 commodation of its Members. 



To the Secretaries, for their courteous discharge of their various 

 and very laborious duties : and to the Members of the Council collec- 

 tively, for their regular and punctual attendance at all the meetings 

 to which they have been summoned, and for the zeal and readiness 

 with which they have undertaken any labour, however considerable, 

 which the interests of the Society might require them to perform. 



The Report of the Council which will be read to you by one of 

 your Secretaries, Dr. Roget, will make known to you various mat- 

 ters connected with the administration of the Society, and also the 

 arrangements adopted for supplying the deficiencies of the Library in 

 different departments of science, and for rendering it more generally 

 accessible, and therefore more useful, by means of complete and well 

 classed catalogues. I must refer you likewise to the same Report 

 for a statement of the grounds upon which two Copley Medals have 

 this year been adjudged, one to Mr. Faraday, and the other to Mons. 

 Poisson. There is, however, one arrangement, admirably calcu- 

 lated, in my opinion, to increase the usefulness and to uphold the 

 credit of the Royal Society, which that Report does not notice; I 

 mean the Resolution adopted by the Council to allow no Paper to be 

 printed in the Transactions of the Royal Society, unless a written 

 Report of its fitness shall have been previously made by one or more 

 Members of the Council, to whom it shall have been especially re- 

 ferred for examination. This Resolution has been acted upon for the 

 greatest part of the last year, and some of those Reports of a favour- 

 able nature have been read before the Society, and printed in the Abs- 

 tracts of our Proceedings. When the number of papers which come 

 before the Society in the course of a year is considered, as well as the 

 great diversity and occasional difficulty of the subjects which they 

 embrace, it will be at once seen how greatly the labours and respon- 

 sibility of the Members of the Council must necessarily be increased 

 by the rigorous adoption of such a system. It is in consequence of 

 the important influence which this plan is likely to have upon the 

 well-being of the Society, that I am induced to enter somewhat in 

 detail into the reasons which have led to its adoption. 



It has long been the custom of many Foreign Societies, and par- 

 ticularly of the Academies of Science and of Medicine at Paris, 

 to require written Reports upon every paper submitted to them, 



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