| 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: John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury; Dr. Henry Frederick Baker; John Norman Collie; Francis Darwin (Foreign Secretary); Wyndham Rowland Dunstan; David Ferrier; Sir Archibald Geikie (Foreign Secretary); Sydney John Hickson; Alfred Bray Kempe (Treasurer); Edwin Ray Lankester; Hugh Frank Newall; Dr. Alexander Scott; Albert Charles Seward; William Johnson Sollas; Ernest Henry Starling; Silvanus Phillips Thompson; Augustus Desire Waller; the President, John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, 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. Death of Mr. H.C. Dyson: Professor Dyson requested to write an Obituary Notice.
3. The two Officers nominated to represent the Society at the Linnaeus anniversary at Upsala should also represent the Society at the Royal Swedish Academy's similar event in Stockholm.
4. Invitation from the Michigan Agricultural College to send a representative to their 50th anniversary celebration declined, but congratulations offered.
5. Mr. Bateson's name added to the delegates for the International Zoological Congress in Boston.
6. Proposals for the General Assembly of the International Association of Academies from the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna were discussed: the Royal Society declared itself not in favour of placing the issue of an auxilairy language on the agenda, but in favour of the topic of a system of symbols for machine description proposed by M. Torres y Quevedo being discussed.
7. List of delegates to the General Assembly of the International Association of Academies to be communicated to the Vienna Academy.
8. Letter from Count Plunkett, claiming that the Royal Irish Academy should have distinct representation at the General Assembly, to be considered.
9. Absence of Council Members as a consequence of the International Association of Academies meeting should be considered as acting in the Royal Society's interests and therefore as a Council attendance.
10. Attention was drawn to two platinum metres belonging to the Royal Society in the Standards Department of the Board of Trade and a memorandum on their past history by the Assistant Secretary was read: resolved that the Standards Department should make a direct comparison with modern standards and the metres were authorised to be sent to the National Physical Laboratory for a similar purpose; once the two reports were received, Council would decide on the disposition of the metres.
11. Letter from the Treasury, forwarding correspondence on membership of the International Seismological Association, noting that Great Britain and France should continue to act together.
12. Letter from Professor Farmer accepting the invitation to deliver the Croonian Lecture, 'On the essential constituents of the nucleus...'
13. The subject of the Bakerian Lecture was mentioned and deferred.
14. May meeting of Council to be held on 30 May, rather than 23 May, Whitsuntide.
15. Resolved that resolutions should only be moved having been put in writing in final form, signed by the mover and seconder, and read from the Chair.
16. The President reported on attending the Royal Commission on Vivisection on 5 March, presenting the statement drawn up by Council.
17. Treasurer reported a balance on the Researches Account of £90: this to be used to write off the outstanding debt incurred by the Funafuti Report.
18. List of candidates for Foreign Membership of the Royal Society entered into the minutes from the Suggestions Book, to be considered at the next meeting.
19. Letter from G.E.P. Murray, Whitehall, London, 11 March 1907, to Lord Rayleigh, the Royal Society, full text entered into the minutes: acknowledging Council's representations on the new Technical Institute at South Kensington.
20. Letter from the Colonial Office, noting that the Treasurer's letter on the cost of the Ceylon Pearl Fisheries Report has been forwarded to the Colonial Government of Ceylon.
21. Leave given to have copies of illustrations from the Society's journals.
22. List of bills for payment fro printing, paper and taxes. |