1870.] 



President's Address. 



123 



vicinity, the coasts of Spain and Portugal and of the Mediterranean have 

 been the fields of exploration in the present year. As the results will form 

 the subject of a communication to the Society at its next Evening Meeting, 

 I abstain from adverting on the present occasion to any of the interesting 

 particulars with which Dr. Carpenter and Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys have been so 

 obliging as to furnish me. 



Her Majesty's Government having been pleased to accede to a request 

 made by a Joint Committee of the Royal and of the Royal Astronomical 

 Societies, for means of conveyance to and from Cadiz and Gibraltar of 

 twenty-five persons desirous of observing the Total Solar Eclipse on the 21st 

 December 1870, and for a sum not exceeding <s£3000 to defray cost of in- 

 struments, travelling-expenses of the scientific party, and other miscellaneous 

 services and purposes connected therewith, the necessary arrangements have 

 been confided to an organizing Committee, under the immediate direction 

 of the Astronomer Royal, and are now in progress. 



You are perhaps aware that your President occupies, as such, an official 

 seat in the Board of Trustees of the British Museum. In attending to 

 these duties, I became impressed with the benefits which might result if 

 objects, for the exhibition of which space cannot be found at the British 

 Museum — and most especially specimens of natural history — were freely 

 lent, under suitable regulations for their safe custody and safe return when 

 required, to Provincial Museums. For this purpose it would be necessary 

 to introduce a modification in the Act of Parliament, under which the 

 Trustees are now bound not to permit the removal from the Museum of any 

 article which has been once received into it. I have made this suggestion 

 known in different quarters, and have found it, generally speaking, so 

 favourably received, that I even thought it possible that I might be able 

 on this occasion to inform you that some advance had been made in its 

 actual realization. I can only say at present that some steps have been 

 taken in that direction, which, I hope, may yet bear fruit. 



I proceed to the award of the Medals. 



The Copley Medal has been awarded to Mr. James Prescott Joule, for 

 his Experimental Researches on Heat. 



The researches, for which the Copley Medal has thus been awarded, are 

 the same for which a Royal Medal was awarded to Mr. Joule in the year 

 1850. The terms of the award in 1850 were for "his Researches on the 

 Mechanical Equivalent of Heat ; " those on the present occasion were for 

 his "Experimental Researches on Heat." Both awards refer to the 

 same experiments, and are substantially for the same great step in Natural 

 Philosophy ; of which, therefore, it is needless for me to give you an account 

 at this time. You are all aware that by it a great principle has been added 

 to the sum of human knowledge — one fruitful in consequences in a thousand 

 ways, and which, being accepted amongst undisputed truths, is now em- 



