Letter from Henry Thomas De La Beche, Geological Survey Office to Edward Sabine Beche refers to his conversation with Sir Robert Peel regarding the presidentship of the Royal Society. Beche argues that if ‘a good scientific man’ could be made president of the Society for two or three years this would lead to advantages not only to the Society but to the ‘position of science’ in the country. Beche personally does not like to take ‘a half course’ by electing a man partly because he is a nobleman, and partly ‘a man of science’, and this would be an ‘adhesion to the old story’. 7 March 1848