| Description | Printed minutes containing matters laid before Council, the Royal Society's governing body of Fellows, with records of decisions taken. Individual minutes are numbered.
Commencing with a list of Council members present: Dr. Shelford Bidwell; George Albert Boulenger; Colonel David Bruce; Frank Watson Dyson; Percy Faraday Frankland; Sir Archibald Geikie (Secretary); Francis Gotch; Dr. Ernest William Hobson; Alfred Bray Kempe (Treasurer); John Newport Langley; Joseph Larmor (Secretary); Dr. John Edward Marr; Sir William Davidson Niven; William Henry Perkin junior; John Perry; Adam Sedgwick; Dr. William Napier Shaw; William Augustus Tilden; Sir William Wharton; the President, Sir William Huggins, in the chair. The Assistant Secretary [Robert Harrison] attended.
Among matters discussed or noted:
1. Minutes of the previous meeting were read and signed as correct.
2. Deaths of Sir Bernhard Samuelson and Dr. Otto von Struve: Sir Andrew Noble and Professor H.H. Turner requested to advise and furnish Obituary Notices.
3. Report of the Government Grant Committee with recommendations for grants from Boards A-G: £500 to be placed as a Council Reserve Fund and £231 to be moved from the Reserve to the General Fund; reports on researches received from Professor Armstrong.
4. Professor Tilden's motion on Foreign Member elections amended and agreed.
5. Statutes Revision Committee summoned to meet on 1 June.
6. Report of the Tropical Diseases Committee. Letter from H. Bertram Cox, Downing Street, 29 April 1905, to [the Secretaries of the Royal Society?], full text entered into the minutes: acknowledging Sir Archibald Geikie's letter on expenses for sending Professor Minchin to Uganda; the Rhodes Trustees had made a grant of £200 for five years, not adequate to establish a permanent professorship when a minimum sum of £700 would be required; he asks if the Society would be willing to surrender £500 per year. The committee had discussed the matter and considerable differences of opinion were expressed; its recommendation was that the grant should be reduced by £500 for the succeeding years, allowing a five-year reserch-only professorship, to be established at the University of London, with no teaching duties.
7. £30 granted to Mr. Fryer from the Donation Fund.
8. Meeting Room ventilation deemed inadequate, Mr. Shaw to investigate further and confer with the Office of Works.
9. Invitation to attend the jubilee celebration of the Schleswig Holstein academy, deemed not possible, but an address of congratulations to be sent.
10. Letter from the Board of Education on a request from the Belgian Government to send a representative to the International Congress of Radiology and Ionisation at Liege: draft letter from the Secretaries of the Royal Society, 18 May 1905, to the Principal Assistant Secretary, Board of Education, South Kensington, full text entered into the minutes; stating that although the Society cannot comment on the importance of the results to be expected from the conference, it would be desirable that the country be represented.
11. Consideration of a proposed memoral to Robert Bunsen at Heidelburg deferred, pending further enquiries.
12. In response to a letter from the Foreign Office on a subsidy for the International Botanical Association, the reply to be that the matter should be referred to the International Association of Academies.
13. Offer from Sir John Evans of a plaster cast by Sir Edgar Boehm of the model for the Darwin Medallion in Westminster Abbey, accepted.
14. A reception to be arranged for American and Canadian visitors from the Society of Chemical Industry next July.
15. Letter from the Reverend Dr. Burton, offering a portrait in oils of Taylor Combe, declined due to want of space.
16. Letter from the Secretary of the Joint Permanent Eclipse Committee requesting a grant of £40 to enable Mr. E.W. Maunder to observe the forthcoming solar eclipse in Labrador, granted from the reserve fund of the Government Grant.
17. Letter from Richard Strachey, Chairman of the Meteorological Council, 69 Lancaster Gate, 15 April 1905, to Sir William Huggins, full text entered into the minutes; the connection between the Meteorological Council and the Meteorological Office having been severed, legal transfer of cash or property to the Treasury remains to be completed. With a letter from Richard Strachey, Chairman of the Meteorological Council, Meteorological Office, 63 Victoria Street, 5 April 1905, to the Secretary of the Treasury, Whitehall, full text entered into the minutes: on new arrangements for the Meteorological Office and the Government Grant; with a letter from G.H. Murray, Treasury Chambers, 8 April 1905, to W.N. Shaw, requesting that he take charge of the Meteorological Office until a new Committee is complete.
18. Treasurer noted the receipt of £2,750 from the Treasury for salaries and expenses of the National Physical Laboratory.
19. Treasurer reported the receipt of £2,000, the legacy of the late Mr. McClean.
20. Revision of the schedule of insurance of the Society's properties.
21. Copies of the audited account of the National Antarctic Expedition tabled.
22. Letter from Brigadier-General A.L. Mills, Headquarters, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, 5 April 1905, to the Secretary, the Royal Society, full text entered into the minutes: noting a printed circular with manuscript notes in the Academy's copy of John Flamsteed's Historia Britannica Coelestis, offering this to the Royal Society, accepted with thanks.
23. Letter of thanks from Professor Turner on the Society's actions regarding the Oxford portion of the Astrographic Catalogue.
24. Leave granted to the Editor of the Chemical News to have copies of an illustration.
25. Bills for payment for printing, binding and engraving. |