| 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 Benjamin Carpenter; John Evans; Captain Douglas Galton; John Peter Gassiot; John Hall Gladstone; Sir Rowland Hill; William Huggins; Thomas Henry Huxley; William Allen Miller; William Hallows Miller; Andrew Crombie Ramsay; William Sharpey; Colonel William James Smythe; George Gabriel Stokes; Colonel Alexander Strange; Thomas Thomson; the President, Lieutenant-General Edward Sabine, in the Chair.
Among matters discussed or noted: minutes of the last meeting read and approved. The nominations of Theodor Ludwig Wilhelm Bischoff, Rudolph J.E. Clausius, Hugo von Mohl, and Samuel Heinrich Schwabe as Foreign Members of the Royal Society were confirmed by ballot. The Foreign Secretary noted the death of J.B.L. Foucault, Foreign Member. Report of the Government Grant Committee in the form of minutes of a meeting of 12 March 1868, full text entered into the minutes: letter from Mr. Mallet explaining the circumstances which prevented his research on volcanic foci at Vesuvius, with some measurements taken at Vulcano, the instruments and machinery now at the University of Naples, and enclosing a cheque for £120, the refund refused by the Committee; list of applications for grants, with a list of grants provisonally made, with Council's approval, which was given. The President informed Council that a monument to Michael Faraday was contemplated for Westminster Abbey, and the Managers of the Royal Institution considered that the matter should be brought forward by the Royal Society: Council approved and the matter was to be brought ot the public by the President, with scientific bodies being asked to join in the promotion. Report of the Committee on the Melbourne Telescope, 19 February 1868, full text entered into the minutes: on testing the completed instrument in Ireland and the results obtained; Mr. Grubb was judged to have fulfilled his contract and should lose no time in preparing cases for transportation to Melbourne. Letter from William Lassell, Ray Lodge, Maidenhead, 28 February 1868, to Edward Sabine, full text entered into the minutes: on his examination of the Melbourne Telescope, including photographs of the Moon taken with the instrument, and direct observations of the Nebula in Orion, Messier 46 and 51, and Uranus and two of its satellites. The Report of the Committee and Mr. Lassell's letter were received and adopted, and ordered to be printed in the Proceedings: Mr. Grubb to be asked to proceed with the construction of associated photographic apparatus. Letter from the President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, reporting that the Institution intended to construct a new building and required a temporary place for meetings, requesting to be able to use the Royal Society's Meeting Room in Burlington House, granted, supposing that the present Meeting Room should be at the Society's disposal. The corporate seal of the Royal Society was affixed to a deed of agreement between the Royal Society, their Acton tenant Mr. James Stevens, and the London and South Western Railway Company. Letter from Edward Hailstone of Horton Hall on behalf of the Chairman of the National Exhibition of Works of Art at Leeds, requesting the loan of the Society's portrait of Jesse Ramsden, the request acceded to. Leave was granted to G.J. Symons to make a copy of a map of the Lake District referred to in a paper by Fletcher Miller of 1849 in the archives. Letter from the Rector of Caroline University of Lund, inviting the Royal Society to send a representative Fellows to be present at the 200th anniversary celebrations of that institution: the Foreign Secretary to return an appropriate reply. Letter from Dr. Ernest Haeckel requesting copies of the Society's journals for the Medical and Natural History Society of Jena, granted as an exchange. A list of institutions and individuals to receive copies of Mr. Parker's work on the sternum and shoulder girdle of the vertebrae was approved. List of bills for payment, for printing and binding. |