Notes

Abstract

AT the Anniversary Meeting of the Fellows of the Royal Society on Thursday last, Lieut.-General Sir Edward Sabine, R.A., K.C.B., resigned the office of president, which he has filled since 1861, and the Astronomer Royal was elected to fill the presidential chair. The following gentlemen were appointed officers and council for the ensuing year:—President: George Biddell Airy, M.A., D.C.L., LL.D., Astronomer Royal. Treasurer: William Spottiswoode, M.A. Secretaries: William Sharpey, M.D., LL.D.; Prof. George Gabriel Stokes, M.A., D.C.L., LL.D. Foreign Secretary: Prof. William Miller, M.A., LL.D. Other Members of the Council: George J. Allman, M. D.; John Ball, M.A.; George Burrowes, M.D.; George Busk, P.R.C.S.; Prof. Robert B. Clifton, M.A.; H. Debus, Ph.D.; Prof. P. M. Duncan, M.B.; Prof. G. Carey Foster, B.A.; Francis Galton; Thos. A. Hirst, Ph.D.; Sir John Lubbock, Bart.; Sir James Paget, Bart., D.C.L.; The Earl of Rosse, D.C.L.; General Sir E. Sabine, R.A., K.C.B.; Isaac Todhunter, M.A.; Sir Charles Wheatstone, D.C.L, The President's annual address was occupied by a résumé of the most important advances in science, mainly physical, during the year. After alluding to the loss sustained by the Society in the deaths of Sir John Herschel, Mr. Babbage, and Sir R. Murchison, General Sabine referred particularly to the munificence of Mr. J. P. Gassiot, by which the Kew Observatory has been transferred to the Royal Society in trust, with an income of 500/. per annum towards the cost of carrying on and continuing magnetical and meteorological observations with self-recording instruments, and any other physical investigations that may from time to time be found practicable and desirable in the present building at Kew belonging to the Government; or, in the event of the Government at any time declining to continue to place that building at the disposal of the Royal Society, then in any other suitable building which the Council of the Royal Society may determine. The following papers and investigations were also specially named by the president:—“On the Dependence of the Earth's Magnetism on the Rotation of the Sun,” by Prof. Hornstein, of Prague; the Pendulum Experiments in India, by the late Captain Basevi, R.N.; Mr. Ellery's report on the Great Melbourne Telescope; the Investigations of the Lunar Atmospheric Tide, by M. Bergsma, of Batavia; and the Memoir by Prof. Heer, of Zürich, on the Fossil Plants brought from Greenland by Prof. Nordenskiöld. The Copley and Royal medals were then awarded, as already noted.