432 



the establishment, but likewise to protect your ordinary meetings 

 from those irregular and somewhat tumultuary discussions on mat- 

 ters of business, or personal conduct, which might otherwise be in 

 danger of arising. 



I believe that many persons have expressed a wish that the regula- 

 tions of this Society should be so far relaxed as to allow, in conformity 

 with the practice of some other similar establishments, discussions 

 upon the papers, and those papers only, which are read before us : I 

 confess, for my own part, that I am not at present prepared to accede 

 to this recommendation. A practice which has been sanctioned by 

 the usage of more than a century and a half, and found to be produc- 

 tive of scientific results unrivalled for their extent and value, should 

 not be abandoned by us without the most mature consideration ; and 

 though I am the last person to recommend a slavish submission to 

 the dictates or to the customs of antiquity, which may be unsuited 

 either to the altered circumstances of modern times, or incapable of 

 defence upon other and independent grounds, yet a reverence is 

 justly due both to maxims and observances which have been sanc- 

 tioned by high authorities, or connected with great and important 

 public benefits. It may be quite true that such discussions would 

 tend materially to increase the personal interest which is taken, by 

 many of our members, in our proceedings ; but when we consider 

 the abstract and abstruse nature of many of the papers which come 

 before us, and which no single reading can make perfectly intel- 

 ligible, even to the best-instructed hearer, as well as the vast variety 

 of subjects which they comprehend, I think we may fairly infer 

 that such discussions would rarely add much to the stock of facts 

 or of reasonings which they contain, or that their influence would be 

 materially felt in the publications of your Transactions, which have 

 always formed, and which ought always to form, the great object of 

 the foundation of this Society, and the only means by which its cha- 

 racter and influence can continue to be maintained unimpaired 

 throughout the civilized world. When we likewise take into further 

 consideration the irregularities and personalities to which such de- 

 bates would on some occasions give rise, unless very strictly li- 

 mited and very authoritatively controlled, as well as the indirect 

 influence which the premature expression of opinions upon the con- 

 tents and merits of individual papers might exercise upon the deci- 

 sion of the Council in selecting them for publication, you will be 

 disposed to agree with me, I trust, in thinking that such an experi- 

 ment would be at least dangerous to the peace, as it very possibly 

 might prove ultimately injurious to the scientific character, of the 

 Royal Society. 



BuL let me not be misunderstood : the success that has attended 

 this practice in the institution which has contributed so powerfully 

 to the rapid advance of a highly popular science, might appear to 

 offer a practical refutation of such grounds of alarm as those which I 

 have ventured to suggest ; but the cases of the two Societies are 

 extremely different. The science of geology is eminently a science 

 of observation, where facts, collected from all quarters of the globe, 



