| 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: Benjamin Guy Babington; George Bowdler Buckton; William Benjamin Carpenter; Warren De La Rue; Sir Philip de Malpas Grey Egerton; Joseph Dalton Hooker; James Clerk Maxwell; William Allen Miller; William Hallows Miller; Richard Owen; William Sharpey; Henry John Stephen Smith; George Gabriel Stokes; James Joseph Sylvester; Charles Wheatsone; the Reverend Robert Willis; the President, Major-General Edward Sabine, in the Chair.
Among matters discussed or noted: minutes of the last meeting read and approved. Heinrich Gustav Magnus and Jacob Steiner to be recommended to the Society for election as Foreign Members. Letter from T.H. Farrer, Office of Committee of Privy Council for Trade, Whitehall, 27 February 1863, to the Secretary of the Royal Society, full text entered into the minutes: requesting the Royal Society's opinion on the operations of the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade, giving background on the expansion of weather forecasting under Admiral Fitzroy and its rising expenditure; asking if meteorological science is in a state to give permanent reliable storm warnings and daily weather forecasts and if money should be diverted to the original purpose of the department, in the collection, tabulation and discussion of meteorological phenomena. Draft reply, letter from William Sharpey, the Royal Society, Burlington House, 28 March 1863, to the Board of Trade, full text entered into the minutes: noting the positive response from various ports consulted, the tentative nature of storm warning and successes in predicting the path of cyclonic storms communicated by telegraph, and newspaper weather forecasts having no cost to the Government. Letter from Professor Tyndall requesting that the Abbe Moigno have cliches of plates illustrating Tyndall's last paper in Philosophical Transactions, granted. £250 from the Government Grant Fund to be placed at the disposal of Mr. Carrington to aid in the publication of his work on sunspots. |