| 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: John Frederic Bateman; Lionel Smith Beale; William Bowman; Commander Frederick John Owen Evans; Edward Frankland; John Peter Gassiot; John Edward Gray; Thomas Archer Hirst; Sir Henry Holland; William Allen Miller; William Hallows Miller; William Odling; Sir John Rennie; William Sharpey; William Spottiswoode; George Gabriel Stokes; Count Paul Edmund de Strzelecki; Sir William Page Wood; the President, Lieutenant-General Edward Sabine, in the Chair.
Among matters discussed or noted: minutes of the last meeting read and approved. Report of the Committee appointed to consider the communication from the Board of Trade on electric light in the pearl fishery at Ceylon, full text entered into the minutes: the committee see no practical difficulty in illuminating the sea floor to moderate depths but they cannot express a view on its sufficiency without making experiments; the report approved and adopted to be transmitted to the Board of Trade. Letter from George Bentham, Linnean Society, Burlington House, London, 7 February 1866, to Edward Sabine, full text entered into the minutes: noting that the Zoological Society has asked permission to use the Linnean Society's rooms in Burlington House for meetings and asking for the Royal Society's approval; the reply to be that the Royal Society's assent is limited to the present session and should not create any claim from the Zoological Society for permanent accommodation. Recommendation of a grant of £50 to be placed in the hands of Professor Huxley on behalf of an applicant to the Scientific Relief Fund, approved. Philosophical Transactions for 1864 and 1865 to be presented to Mr. Burjorjee Sorabjee Ashburner. Philosophical Transactions and Proceedings to be granted as an exchange with the Ecole Normale Superieure of Paris. Applications for publications from the Dutch Society of Sciences of Haarlem and from the Zoological Society of Frankfurt, acceded to. Letter from the Secretary of the Queckett Microscopical Club requesting permission to hold meetings at Burlington House, refused. Letter from the Astronomer Royal, 31 January 1866, addressed to Mr. Stokes and a letter from the President of 7 February 1866: a draft reply to George Biddell Airy, full text entered into the minutes, on a perceived slight to the Meteorological Department of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, by exalting the Observatory at Kew in a communication to the Board of Trade. |