72 



Anniversary Meeting. 



[Not. 30, 



one of the Secretaries, shall cause the Council to be summoned for 

 the election of a new President, and the Council meeting thereupon 

 in the usual place, or any eleven or more of them, shall proceed to the 

 said election, and not separate until the major part of them shall have 

 agreed upon a new President." 



This statute is substantially, and, to a great extent, verbally, 

 identical with the twelfth section of the seventh chapter of the 

 original statutes of 1663. 



Before the present year, five occasions had arisen on which it 

 became necessary to put the provisions of the statute into effect. 



Sir Isaac Newton died while President in 1727; the Earl of Morton 

 in 1768; Mr. West in 1772; and Sir Joseph Banks in 1820; while 

 Sir Humphry Davy resigned in 1827. On each of these occasions, 

 a new President was at once appointed by the Council, endowed with 

 all the privileges and powers of the office; and, like every other officer, 

 however appointed, he vacated his office on the 30th November follow- 

 ing, when the Fellows sometimes elected him for the succeeding year, 

 and sometimes did not. 



These precedents were strictly followed on the present occasion. A 

 Council had been summoned, in ordinary course of business, for the 

 28th of June ; but, as the President died on the 27th, the meeting was 

 deferred until the following Thursday, when it was supposed the inter- 

 ment would have taken place. In consequence of the delay inseparable 

 from a public ceremony, however, it so happened that the funeral did 

 not take place until noon of the 5th of July ; and I have known few 

 sadder scenes than the gathering of the Council, fresh from the 

 unclosed grave of their President, for the performance of the duty, 

 imposed upon them by the Statutes, of choosing his successor from 

 their own number, before they should separate. 



The Council did me the great honour of selecting me for the office ; 

 and now, on this next following St. Andrew's Day, my tenure, like 

 that of the Treasurer and Secretaries, lapses ; and it is for the Fellows 

 of the Society to say who shall be their officers until the next 

 Anniversary Meeting. 



Having served several years, in another capacity, with three out of 

 four of my present colleagues, and having every reason to believe that 

 the Fellows of the Society, at large, see good reason to set the same 

 high value upon the services of all of them as I do, I do not find 

 myself able to imagine that you will fail to desire that those services 

 shall be continued ; but I have not the least difficulty in conceiving 

 that the Fellows of the Society may think many of their number 

 better fitted for the eminent place of the President than myself. 



I should be extremely ungrateful to my colleagues of the Council, 

 who have again honoured me by presenting me for election by the 

 Fellows, if I were to let fall even a hint of the extent to which I 



