1882.] 



President's Address. 



307 



the Royal Society. That experimental period terminated, as then 

 mentioned in my address, last year. The grant to the Science and Art 

 Department has been discontinued, and in place of it an addition of 

 £3,000 per annum has been made to the Government grant, making 

 £4,000 in all. In concluding this arrangement the following stipula- 

 tions were agreed to. The increased grant is to be administered by a 

 Committee identical with the late Government Fund Committee ; a 

 portion may be devoted to personal grants, subject, however, to special 

 recommendations to the Treasury; and, lastly, unexpended balances 

 may be carried forward from year to year, as has hitherto been the 

 case with the old Government grant only. To the stipulation that the 

 increased fund should be administered by the more extended com- 

 mittee the Society felt that no reasonable objection could be offered, 

 because upon it the President and Council are represented in full, and 

 the ex officio members are in the majority of cases Fellows of the 

 Society. The object of the second stipulation was, so far as the 

 Society is concerned, to secure at the outset for the personal grants 

 the consent and support of the Treasury, and thereby to preclude the 

 chance of objection being subsequently taken to any of our proposals 

 under this head. The President and Council, however, recognising 

 the importance of great caution in respect of personal grants, have of 

 their own motion appointed a special sub-committee (in addition to 

 the three previously existing), to which all personal applications 

 recommended by any of the other sub-committees are specially 

 referred, and without whose recommendation none can come before the 

 General Committee. To the third mentioned point, viz., the power of 

 retaining unexpended balances, the President and Council attach 

 great value, because that power may enable the Committee to devote 

 more of its funds than heretofore to some of the larger undertakings 

 in scientific enquiry, leaving more of the smaller grants to the special 

 funds already in existence in the hands of the Royal and other 

 societies. The meetings of this Committee will probably take place 

 twice a year, in May and November. In the present year it will not 

 be possible to hold the second meeting before December, but there 

 will be advantages in holding it hereafter in November, as the 

 entire annual grants will then be made by the same Committee, and 

 under the sanction of the same President and Council. In concluding 

 these few remarks on the new arrangements, I cannot refrain from 

 expressing my sense of the obligation under which the Society and 

 Science at large are laid by the sympathetic and intelligent attention 

 bestowed upon the subject by the then Financial Secretary of the 

 Treasury, the late Lord Frederick Cavendish. 



Among other subjects referred to the Royal Society by Public 

 Departments, I may mention a request from the Board of Trade for 

 advice upon the question of improving the existing means at the 



