REPORT OF THE COUNCIL. 
xliii 
important scheme for improving navigation, and accumulating meteorological 
data to an extent far surpassing anything which lias hitherto been attempted. 
The Government have also appointed G'apt. Robert FitzRoy, R.N. to be at 
the head of this new department, which is in itself a guarantee that it will suc¬ 
cessfully carry out all the important objects for which it has been established. 
Scientific officers of the navy and mercantile marine will now feel assured 
that the records of their valuable observations aud surveys will no longer 
slumber uegleeted amidst the du*t of offices, but be reduced and rendered 
available to science and mankind without any unnecessary delay. Tim -urn 
voied for the new department by the House of Commons for the present 
year is £3200, but there can be no doubt that this sum will be augmented 
in future years, if the expectations that we havo been led to form as to the 
inestimable public benefits likely to flow from tire labours of this office shall 
be realized. 
Captain FitzRoy has since his appointment been employed in superin¬ 
tending the construction of instruments, printing forms, and selecting agents 
at the outports. Some ships will be supplied with instruments in October, 
and Captain FitzRoy expects that the new office will be fully organized in 
the succeeding month. 
The following correspondence relates to the second subject above-men¬ 
tioned :— 
“ Hth March, 1854. 
“My Lord, —As Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee of the British 
Association appointed for watching over the interests of science, I have been 
requested to address you on a subject of great importance to those interests. 
" Your lordship is probably not aware, that soon after the accession uf the 
late Government to power, Sir Robert lnglis and myself solicited and obtained 
an interview with Lord Derby, in which we represented to him that consider¬ 
able dissatisfaction prevailed among the. cultivators of science generally at the 
bad success which had attended certain then recent applications for pensions 
to some eminent scientific individuals, which had beeu preferred by the Pre¬ 
sident of tho Royal Society, aud by subsequent investigations it was ascer¬ 
tained (and I communicated the fact to Lord Derby by letter dated in April 
1852), that since the accession of Her Majesty about thirteen per cent, only 
of the annual sum allowed by Parliament to be granted for pensions to 
deserving persons had fallen fo the lot of science, a result which naturally 
contributed to increase that foeling of dissatisfaction, to which I have already 
adverted. 
“ It appears that a recent application by Lord Rosso of a similar character 
lias been unsuccessful, and that your lordship in declining to accede to it 
expressed yourself as followsIn order to meet even a small portion of 
k nT 8 P 1 c ern;< * to n,e » l have been compelled to require that poverty 
should be the attendant of merit; and that the pension should be as much 
the relief of pecuniary distress as the acknowledgment of intellectual attain¬ 
ments. Lord Rosso could not of course consider a letter from your lord¬ 
ship on a subject ut vital importance to science in the character of n pri¬ 
vate communication; and as that subject had already been referred to the 
consideration of our Committee, of which be is an influential member, a copy 
ol your lordship s letter was laid before it. 
“ Now whatever our individual opinions may be on the merits of the par- 
icular ease to which 1 havo alluded, 1 purposely abstain from stating them, 
in order that the object of die present address may not be misunderstood, — 
that Object being, to represent to your lordship, with all that respect which is 
justly due both to yourself and to the high station which you occupy, that the 
