| Description | Printed minutes containing matters laid before Council, the Royal Society's governing body of Fellows, with records of decisions taken.
Commencing with a list of Council members present: Thomas Bell; Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie; Charles Darwin; John Miers; James Paget; the Reverend Baden Powell; William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse; Colonel Edward Sabine; William Sharpey; George Gabriel Stokes; William Tite; Charles Wheatstone; the President, John Wrottesley, 2nd Baron Wrottesley, in the chair.
Among matters discussed or noted: minutes of the last meeting were read and confirmed. Report of the Fairchild Lecture Committee, full text entered into the minutes: on steps to make the lecture more efficiently administered, including the presentation of a copy of the lecture to the Royal Society to decide on whether it should be printed, advertising the event, snf printing a short statement of the objects and conditions for the annual lecturer; with a recommendation that the Secretary inform the Churchwardens of Shoreditch that the Reverend George Martin Broune would not be paid the annual allowance, since he had not been appointed Fairchild Lecturer by President and Council; the report was adopted. Letter from William Sharpey, Secretary, the Royal Society, 20 June 1855, to Sir James South, full text entered into the minutes: having been informed by Mr. White that South had knowledge of the possessor of the Leeuwenhoek microscopes bequeathed to the Royal Society, and hoping to recover them, he asks South to provide any information he is at liberty to communicate. Letter from James South, Observatory, Kensington, 22 June 1855, to William Sharpey, Secretary, the Royal Society, Somerset House, full text entered into the minutes: South declines to correspond with anyone other than the President and Council of the Royal Society, to whom he adddressed his original letter. Draft letter from the Secretary [William Sharpey], to Sir James South, full text entered into the minutes: informing South that his letter had been laid before President and Council, and he writes in their name to request any information that South may have on the whereabouts of the Leeuwenhoek microscopes. The Earl of Rosse presented a memorandum on the subject which he had given notice of at the last meeting: Mr. Tite gave notice that he would move at the first meeting of Council in November, that a special committee be appointed to consider the Earl of Rosse's memorandum. Resolved that when completed, the report of the Committee on M. Scheutz's calculating machine should be published in the Proceedings. |