| 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: Frederick Augustus Abel; William Bowman; William Carruthers; Major-General Henry Clerk; William Crookes; John Evans; Sir William Robert Grove; Augustus George Vernon Harcourt; Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker; Thomas Henry Huxley; Sir Astley Cooper-Key; Sir Henry Lefroy; Sir John Lubbock; Charles William Siemens; John Simon; George Gabriel Stokes; Allen Thomson; Alexander William Williamson; the President, William Spottiswoode, in the chair.
Among matters discussed or noted: minutes of the last meeting read and approved. Death of Dr. Peyton Blakiston. New Members of Council made and subscribed to the declaration in lieu of the oath. Appointment of Vice-Presidents. £250 placed at the disposal of the Library Committee to meet expenses of the Catalogue of Scientific Papers. Repeal of first, second and fourth sections of Chapter III of Statutes to be proposed at another meeting of Council: drafts of new Statutes, full text entered into the minutes. Treasurer authorised to purchase £4,000 London and North Western Railway stock with a portion of the fee Reduction Fund: to invest the balance of the Handley Fund; and to retain the services of an accountant for the purpose of auditing. Letter from Christopher Oakley, 10 Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, 18 December 1878, to Walter White, Royal Society, Burlington House, full text entered into the minutes: he has spoken to the Mr. Wilson and Mr. Eachus on the proposed construction of a sewage plant at Mablethorpe; the Rural Sanitary Committee wish to purchase the whole or part of a field of about five acres, the best of the four which the Royal Society owns; Mablethorpe has not increased with the arrival of the railway and is unlikely to become a place of importance; Oakley believes that the Committee should pay £150 per acre for the whole field, or £200 per acre for a part only, settling with the occupant and paying all legal fees. The Treasurer to decline the sale of Mablethorpe property. Letter from the Treasury expressing thanks for the Society's answer to its enquiry on Edinburgh Observatory. Letter from Richard Assheton Cross, Home Office, Whitehall, 13 November 1878, to the President of the Royal Society, full text entered into the minutes: on colliery accidents and the sacrifice of life, requesting information from scientific men on the prevention of accidents; a committee appointed to consider what answer should be made. Re-appointment of committees, with lists of members: Library Committee; Soiree and House Committee; Estates Committee; Committee to consider Reports of Naturalists to the Transit of Venus Expeditions to Kerguelen's Land and to Rodriguez; Government Grant Committee. The paper 'On the illumination of lines of molecular pressure and the trajectory of molecules' by William Crookes appointed as the Bakerian Lecture. Bill for payment for books. |