1877.] 



President's Address. 



429 



transferred to a well-qualified firm of printers, on such conditions as 

 will enable us, we hope, to effect an important saving in our annual 

 charge for printing. It is thought, moreover, that the compilation of the 

 Catalogue of Scientific Papers, which, though no part of our ordinary- 

 work, had been voluntarily undertaken and paid for by the Society, and 

 diligently conducted under the supervision of your officers, should not 

 be allowed to press unduly upon our resources, and that the time had 

 come when application should be made to the Government Fund for aid 

 to enable us to meet the increasing demands on our income for the work 

 of the Catalogue. 



And further, as bearing on the question of finance, your Council have 

 resolved that the difference between the amount of Life composition 

 payable by newly- elected Eellows who have and those who have not pre- 

 viously to election contributed a paper to the Transactions should cease, 

 and that a part of the funded property of the Society should be invested 

 in secure Stocks yielding a larger interest than the Government funds. 



Presents. — It is always with peculiar pleasure that I announce the 

 presentation of good portraits of scientific worthies. Two in oils, 

 received during the vacation, are now hung on our walls : one of Sir 

 John Herschel, a very faithful likeness, presented by our Fellow, Mr. 

 John Evans ; the other, presented by our late Secretary, Dr. Sharpey, 

 is that of Haller, the physiologist, anatomist, botanist, and poet, whose 

 genius and labours were the admiration of his contemporaries, as they 

 have been ever since of his successors. It is not without pride that our 

 countrymen can record the facts that an English sovereign, George II., 

 was the first who recognized the merit of Haller, the Swiss, by bestowing 

 on him his earliest preferment, a professorship in Gottingen, and ever 

 after showing him every mark of respect, and that, on a subsequent occa- 

 sion, an English University, Oxford, offered him a professorship. The 

 portrait is an excellent one, in perfect preservation, and forms a most 

 valuable addition to our gallery. 



I have also to inform you that a sum of .£500 has been contributed 

 anonymously by five Eellows to the Society's funds for general purposes, 

 and that our Eoreign Secretary has proposed that his office should, as long 

 as he holds it, be regarded as an honorary one, with charge of the Society's 

 foreign correspondence. This very liberal proposal was accepted by the 

 Council, only in so far as resolving that the Eoreign Secretaryship should 

 be placed on the same footing in respect of salary as it was before the 

 year 1865 ; that is to say, that the honorarium should be limited, as in 

 former years, to the proceeds of the original endowment. 



Our Eellow, Dr. William Earr, has presented to the Society an 

 annotated copy of Thomson's ' History of the Royal Society,' containing 

 the dates of death of Eellows who died subsequently to the publication of 

 that work, as far as these could be obtained from the Society's Minutes 



