clxxx 
Monthly Council , December 12, 1894. 
present proposition, the three-fourths 
standard was only proposed to be 
required for the gold medal. He 
thought it undesirable to complicate 
their standards too much, and on the 
whole he preferred the proposal made 
by the Education Committee after 
very full discussion yesterday. It was 
a great thing to have simplicity in 
rules, and he thought that the matter 
would be unnecessarily complicated 
if the gold medal should be for those 
wl.o passed one standard of three- 
fourths, and the silver medal for 
those who passed with two-thirds. If 
the proposal originally put was 
adopted, the gold medallist would be 
the best of the five candidates. What 
he objected to was the loading of the 
rules with intricate distinctions. 
Earl Cathcap.t said he could not 
appreciate that argument. He felt 
there must be a distinction. He 
thought it was upoD this ground that 
the Surveyors’ Institute had so in- 
creased the stringency of their exami- 
nation, and the Council ought also to 
be stringent in respect to the exami- 
nations of the Society, in order to 
keep pace with what was going on 
outside. For this reason he felt 
obliged to vote for the amendment of 
Mr. Sutton. 
Viscount Emlyn said he thought 
there was one point which had not as 
yet. been touched upon. The object 
was to raise the gold medallist dis- 
tinctly above the silver medallists. 
There was to be only one gold as 
against four silver medals ; but what 
would be the result of giving these 
medals as proposed by Mr. Sutton ? 
They would have gold medallists 
gaining three-fourths of the marks, 
and silver medallists coming next 
with the same proportion; one get- 
ting the gold, and the other the silver 
medal. There might be very little 
margin, but a candidate with the 
marks that obtained the gold medal 
of the year before might only obtain 
the silver medal in his own year. 
Mr. Sutton’s amendment was then 
put, and declared carried by 18 votes 
to 11. 
Sir Nigel Kingscote said that it 
was a matter of very great regret 
that their friend Mr. Pell was not 
there that day owing to ill health, 
because he would have supported very 
strongly, both in Committee and 
before the Council, his ("Sir Nigel’s) 
view on the question of these Life 
Memberships. They were going now 
to adopt a proposal to give annually 
five Life Memberships. Certainly the 
proposal was safeguarded to some 
extent by the proviso that the recipi- 
ents must pass with two-thirds of the 
maximum number of marks ; but if 
they referred to the statistics, they 
would find that a great many of those 
who came up for examination passed 
with two-thirds of the marks. This 
year there were six, in 1893 there 
were eight, in 1889 there were seven, 
so that it would be practically an 
absolute certainty that the five Life 
Memberships would have to be given 
away each year. He felt very strongly 
— not from the pecuniary point of 
view — and he believed that he was 
confirmed by the opinions of many 
outside, that the great object of can- 
didates in coming up for this exami- 
nation was to obtain Life Member- 
ships. He thought the Council ought 
to make them more valuable, and that 
five per annum were too many. Since 
they began giving Life Memberships 
in 1868, they had granted in all 106. 
He thought it would make the Life 
Membership much more valuable if 
the number were limited to four every 
year, and he therefore moved as an 
amendment that four Life Member- 
ships be granted, with a corresponding 
numter of medals, instead of five, as 
proposed by the Committee. 
Mr. Frankish having seconded 
the amendment, 
Sir Jacob Wilson said that, whilst 
they all regretted very much the 
absence of Mr. Fell, he also regretted 
the absence of Mr. Foster, who repre- 
sented the other side of the question. 
Mr. Foster had requested him (Sir 
Jacob) to express regret t hat, although 
he attended on purpose for this matter 
in November, he was unable to come 
up again in December. The matter 
had received, no doubt, a great deal 
of anxious consideration at the hands 
of the Education Committee, and he 
was bound to say that, so far as he 
could see, they had arrived at a very 
satisfactory compromise. Seeing the 
Society had recognised as part of its 
duty the encouragement of agricul- 
tural education, the Council had, in 
