1879.] 



President's Address. 



413 



honour and compliment conferred on, or addressed to her late hus- 

 band, Michael Faraday." 



(2.) Regulations and Procedure. — At the last anniversary your late 

 President* explained the changes then in progress for the abolition of 

 entrance fees, and for reduction in the annual payments made to the 

 Society by the Fellows. I have now only to add that the alterations 

 in the Statutes, necessary for carrying this out, have been completed. 



During the past year a small but perhaps not unimportant change 

 in the mode of dealing with the papers to be read at the weekly 

 meetings has been made. This consists first, in deciding a week earlier 

 than heretofore, what papers should be advertised for reading ; and 

 secondly, in reading each week as many as practicable of those in hand, 

 so as to leave as few as possible to stand over. The weekly journals 

 are now able to announce to the public the papers which will be read 

 at the Royal Society (as has in fact long been the case with other 

 Societies) during the next week. But the main object of this arrange- 

 ment has been early publication ; that is to say, publication both in its 

 technical sense of reading before the Society, and in its more widely 

 accepted sense of appearance in the Society's Proceedings. When this 

 was first proposed, it was feared there would soon arrive a period of 

 scientific famine, and that occasions might occur when the Society 

 would meet with no papers before it. Whether this would be so 

 great a calamity as was at first imagined is still an open question, for 

 such has been the scientific fertility of the season, that the threatened 

 catastrophe has never yet actually occurred. But, more than this, 

 your President was supported in any anxiety which he may have 

 felt on this score, by an assurance on the part of the Secretaries that 

 in the event of no other communication reaching us from other 

 quarters, one or other of them would contribute something from 

 their own store. And although our stock of papers has never 

 reached a famine level, our two principal Secretaries have fulfilled 

 their promise by anticipating it. Having regard to this prompt 

 action on their part, I doubt not that the Society will agree with me 

 in thinking that the prospect of a dearth of papers has proved to be 

 productive of advantages rather than the reverse. 



But so far from suffering by a deficiency of matter, we have more 

 often found our difficulties in the number of papers to be read in a 

 single evening. And on such occasions the Secretaries have been good 

 enough to take especial pains to make themselves masters of the 

 contents of the papers, and to communicate in a few words to 

 the meeting the substance of each. It is, 1 believe, not too much 

 to say that the " reading " of papers carried out in this way has 

 been the most agreeable and instructive, and has been particularly 

 provocative of intelligent and pertinent discussion. The previous 

 preparation necessary to effect this must, I know, entail considerable 



