472 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
Monday , 3 d December 1877. 
Principal Sir Alexander Grant, Bart., one of the Vice-Pre- 
sidents of the Society, read the following Opening Address : — 
Gentlemen, — I find it recorded* that in the year 1662, which was 
the first year of the incorporation of the Royal Society of London, 
the celebrated mathematician, Robert Hooke, drew up “ Proposals 
for the good of the Royal Society,” the third article of which was as 
follows : — “ That every member of the Society shall be equally 
obliged to promote the ends thereof by paying 52s. yearly, and by 
doing some one duty that shall be charged on him by the Council 
once a year, or, if his occasions will not permit, to pay 52s. more 
per annum.” This proposed salutary rule does not seem ever to 
have been enacted by the Royal Society of London, nor do I believe 
that any analogous article forms part of the statutes of this Society, 
and yet it is in accordance with the spirit of such a rule that I 
appear before you this evening. 
When the Council of this Society requested me, only four weeks 
ago, to open the ensuing session by addressing you, I at once, though 
perhaps imprudently, resolved to obey them, and to do “ the one 
duty charged upon me by the Council.” But in the meantime I 
have become more and more conscious of the fact, that probably no 
length of preparation would have enabled me to offer you an address 
worthy of this occasion and of my predecessors in this chair, and that 
it would be a simple impossibility to accomplish this within a few 
weeks at a period of the year when the distractions are so manifold 
that I can scarcely get a clear morning, not to speak of a clear day. 
I must therefore ask you to accept for the nonce some discourse on 
matters which are a very old story now. I know that the Royal 
Society is like those Athenians of whom it was said that they “ spent 
their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new 
thing.” Therefore, an idea to be suitable for the Royal Society 
ought to be brand new. But I shelter myself under the reflection, 
that the topic which has suggested itself to my mind for this evening 
is one which might perhaps always claim a certain welcome in this 
room. For I thought of whiling away the opening half-hour of our 
* In Weld's History of the Royal Society , vol. i. p. 139. To this excellent 
history the following paper is much indebted. 
