, some inquiry
is necessary, when such large sums are expended. I shall endeavour,
therefore, to approximate to the sum these engravings have cost the
Royal Society.

Previous to 1810, there are upwards of seventy plates to papers of
Sir E. Home's; in many of these, which I have purposely separated, the
workmanship is not so minute as in the succeeding ones. Since 1810,
there have occurred 187 plates attached to papers of the same author.
Many of these have cost from twelve to twenty guineas each plate; but
I shall take five pounds as the average cost of the first portion, and
twelve as that of the latter. This would produce,

70 X 5 = 350
187 X 12 = 2244
...... -----...... L2594

As this is only proposed as a rough approximation, let us omit the odd
hundreds, and we have two thousand pounds expended in plates only on ONE
branch of science, and for one person! Without calling in question
the importance of the discoveries contained in those papers, it may be
permitted to doubt whether such a large sum might not have been expended
in a manner more beneficial to science. Not being myself conversant with
those subjects, I can only form an opinion of the value from extraneous
circumstances. Had their importance been at all equal to their number,
I should have expected to have heard amongst the learned of other
countries much more frequent mention of them than I have done, and even
the Council of the Royal Society would scarcely have excluded from
their Transactions one of those productions which they had paid for as a
lecture.

It might also have been more delicate not to have placed on the Council
so repeatedly a gentleman, for whose engravings they were annually
expending, during the last twenty years, about an hundred pounds. On
the other hand, when the Council lent Sir E. Home the whole of
those valuable plates to take off impressions for his large work on
Comparative Anatomy, of which they constitute almost the whole, it might
have been as well not to have obliterated from each plate all indication
of the source to which he was indebted for them.

THE PRESIDENT'S DISCOURSES.--I shall mention this circumstance, because
it fell under my own observation.

Observing in the annual accounts a charge of 381L 5s. for the
President's Speeches, I thought it right to inquire into the nature
of this item. Happening to be on the Council the next year, I took an
opportunity, at an early meeting of t