| 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: Captain William de Wiveleslie Abney; William Grylls Adams; John Gilbert Baker; Thomas Lauder Brunton; William Henry Mahoney Christie; Warren de La Rue; Sir Frederick Evans; John Evans (Treasurer); George Carey Foster; Michael Foster; James Whitbread Lee Glaisher; Sir William Gull; Hugo Muller; Joseph Prestwich; Osbert Salvin; George Gabriel Stokes; Alexander William Williamson; the President, Thomas Henry Huxley, in the chair.
Among matters discussed or noted: minutes of the last meeting read and approved. Deaths of Robert Angus Smith and Karl Adolph Wurtz. The latter meant that there were now three vacancies on the list of Foreign Members and names entered in the Suggestion Book were read, selection deferred to next Council. Arthur Schuster appointed to deliver the Bakerian Lecture on the discharge of electricity through gases. £100 from the Scientific Relief Fund to be placed in the hands of Professor Huxley, for the benefit of an applicant. List of candidates for Royal Society Medals, to be considered for proposers and seconders at a later meeting. Report of the Government Grant Committee, in the form of minutes of a meeting on 28 May 1884, full text entered into the minutes: including membership changes and lists of applications received and assessed by Sub-Committees A-C; lists of recommendations for grant awards, confirmed. Leave granted to Professor Humpidge to retain the thermometers employed in his research on metallic glucinum. Recommendations from the Government Grant Committee on awards from the Donation Fund. £50 from the Donation Fund awarded to Messrs. Langley and Gaskell to assist on physiological investigations of Sauropsida and £10 awarded to Dr. Brunton for research to be made by Dr. Cash. The Treasurer reported the sum of £1,000, given by the executors of Sir William Siemens, for the benefit of the Scientific Relief Fund, and the Treasurer was authorised to purchase £1,000 of Great Northern Railway stock accordingly. Treasurer authorised to pay £126 from the Donation Fund, expenses for the surveying ship Triton. Letter from the Treasury expressing difficulties felt at joining the Metric Convention, a draft reply approved. Letter from W.V. Harcourt, Whitehall, 30 April 1884, to the President of the Royal Society, full text entered into the minutes: expressing Her Majesty's pleasure at receiving the loyal address on the death of H.R.H. Prince Leopold, the Duke of Albany. Letter from the Acting Secretary of the Loan Exhibition of Scottish National Portraits, requesting the loan of the portrait of George Buchanan, granted. Letter from the Franklin Institute at Philadelphia announcing an International Electrical Exhibition and inviting delegates to be appointed by Council. Leave granted to William Huggins to have the loan of the spectrum map belonging to his paper on the spectra of stars. Leave granted to Messrs. Etheridge and Carpenter to publish their plates on Blastoidea. Letter from the Chancellor, Rector and Principal of Edinburgh University for deputing Lord Rayleigh to attend their tercentenary. List of bills for payment, for furniture, boiler repairs and for other expenses. |