The inequcility has a contrary sign to the inequality of the same ar- gument in the tides of the ocean.
April 1, 1841.
The MARQUIS of NORTHAMPTON, President, in the Chair.
Bartholomew Parker Bidder, Esq., and Julian Jackson, Esq., were balloted for, but not elected into the Society.
The following letter, addressed to the President, was read : —
" 4, Trafalgar Square, London, March 25th, 1841.
" My Lord, — I have the honour of transmitting to Your Lordship for presentation to the Royal Society, an original portrait of Sir Isaac Newton by Vanderbank, a Dutch painter of some note in that age.
" This picture has now been many years in my possession, and the tenure by which I have kept it (as a collateral descendant of so illustrious a man) was too flattering not to have been a source of great personal gratification.
" But I consider such a portrait to belong of right to the scientific world in general, and more especially to that eminently distinguished Society of which Newton was once the head, and which is now so ably presided over by Your Lordship.
" I have, therefore, to request Your Lordship will do me the honour to present this original portrait of Sir Isaac Newton to the Royal Society in my humble name.
" Accident having destroyed some of the papers of my family, I am unable of myself to trace the entire history of this portrait, but I believe more than one member of the Royal Society is competent to do so, and it is well known to collectors ; and a small mezzotinto engraving of it was published about forty years ago. It was painted the year before Newton died, and came into the family of the cele- brated Lord Stanhope, who left it by his v/ill to my grandfather, the late Dr. Charles Hutton, a distinguished member of the Royal Society, expressly on the well-authenticated account of that eminent mathematician having been remotely descended from Sir Isaac New- ton, in the following way, as I find on a family manuscript ; viz.
- that the mother of the well-known James Hutton and the mother
of Dr. Charles Hutton were sisters ; and the grandmother of James Hutton and the mother of Sir Isaac Newton were also sisters.'
" I have ever considered this very distant connexion with so great a man should not be an inducement to lead me into any but casual mention of the circumstance, that I might avoid the imputation of a vain boast ; nor would it have been brought forward now, except
