to prevent the President from placing incompetent persons upon it, it would also afford some check, although perhaps but a slight one, on the distribution of the medals. When I have urged the expediency of the practice, I have been answered by excuses, that the list could not be made up in time for the volume. If this is true of the first part, they might appear with the second; and even if this were impracticable, the plan of prefixing them to the volume of the succeeding year, would be preferable to that of omitting them altogether. The true reason, however, appeared at last. It was objected to the plan, that by the present arrangement, the porter of the Royal Society took round the list to those members resident in London, and got from some of them a remuneration, in the shape of a Christmas-box;[1] and this would be lost, if the time of printing were changed. Such are the paltry interests to which those of the Royal Society are made to bow.
Another point on which information ought to be given in each volume, is the conditions on which the distribution of the Society's medals
- ↑ During the printing of this chapter, a friend, on whom I had called, complained that the porter of the Royal Society had demanded half-a-crown for leaving the list.
