| 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 Benjamin Carpenter; William Carruthers; William Crookes; Peter Martin Duncan; Arthur Farr; William Henry Flower; George Carey Foster; John Russell Hind; Thomas Henry Huxley; John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh; Sir George Henry Richards; Henry John Stephen Smith; William Spottiswoode; George Gabriel Stokes; Allen Thomson; Alexander William Williamson; the President, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, in the chair.
Among matters discussed or noted: minutes of the last meeting read and approved. Deaths of Colonel Thomas George Montgomerie, Antoine Cesar Becquerel, Claude Bernard, Elias Magnus Fries, Henri Victor Regnault and Ernest Heinrich Weber; five vacancies in Foreign Members noted. Letter from Simon Newcomb, thanking the Royal Society for his election as a Fellow. Seal of the Royal Society affixed to a power of attorney for the sale of Consols to complete the £15,000 for the Chitterne Mortgage, the mortgage deed signed and sealed.
Report of the Government Fund Committee, presented as the full text of minutes of the meeting of 13 February 1878, including a full list of committee members and appointment of representatives from the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh: lists of grant applications to committees and grants awarded: Committee A, 37 applications, totalling £4,630, of which grants for £2,020 recommended; Committee B, 30 applications, totalling £2,610, of which grants for £1,225 recommended; Committee C, 13 applications, totalling £2,035, of which grants for £1,250. Report of the Government Grant Committee, presented as the full text of minutes of the meeting of 14 February 1878, including a full list of committee members: 19 individual applications for grants presented, with correspondence on other grant applications; a list of 17 successful applications amounting to £1,050 in grants.
Other Council business. £25 from the Donation Fund awarded to Mr. W.R. Hodgkinson for an investigation on the action of ethylbenzol acetate and chlorine on ethers. Minutes of the Soiree Committee were read and the Committee empowered to carry out recommendations: £100 allocated to meet expenses; the soiree to take place on 1 May with receptions on 6 March and 22 May. £50 placed in the hands of Sir Joseph Hooker and £50 to Professor Duncan for the benefit of applicants to the Scientific Relief Fund. The Mathematical Society granted leave to have separate mathematical papers from the Philosophical Transactions. Application from Mrs. Sibson to have wood blocks and copper plates of the porpoise paper of Dr. F. Sibson, for republication, granted. Leave granted to the Editor of Nature to have an electrotype of Balfour Stewart's paper. A letter of congratulation to Professor von Siebold on the 50th anniverary of his professorship to be drawn up. A donation of 2 guineas to the parochial schools at Mablethorpe. Letter, George Gabriel Stokes, the Royal Society, Burlington House, 20 December 1877, to Richard Owen, full text entered into the minutes: on plates used in his published work on fossil remains of Australia being reworked from Philosophical Transactions lithographs without permission. Letter from Richard Owen, British Museum, 21 December 1877, to George Gabriel Stokes, full text entered into the minutes: the plates in fossil mammmals of Australia were those transmitted to him as author and since he had made similar use of plates for his papers on Megatherium of 1860, it did not occur to him that he needed special authority. Letter from Richard Owen, Sheen Lodge, Richmond Park, 26 December 1877, to George Gabriel Stokes, full text entered into the minutes: providing further details of his action in reproducing plates, the difference between the Megatherium paper and the extinct Australian mammals, being that he received a Government Grant for the former; if his action has damaged the Society, he would be happy to reimburse the Treasurer. Resolved that a letter to be sent to Professor Owen, regretting that the Society's mark should have been obliterated at the head of the plates and that no acknowledgement to the Royal Society appeared. The President informed Council that owing to pressure of work at Kew, he would be unable to accept the honour of re-nomination to the Presidency at the next Anniversary. |