ed connecting their names with the Council
as long as the present system of management is pursued.

The little interest taken by the body of the Society, either in its
peculiar pursuits, or in the proceedings of the Council, and the little
communication which exists between them, is an evil. Thus it happens
that the deeds of the Council are rarely known to the body of the
Society, and, indeed, scarcely extend beyond that small portion who
frequent the weekly meetings. These pages will perhaps afford the first
notice to the great majority of the Society of a breach of faith by
their Council, which it is impossible to suppose a body, consisting of
more than six hundred gentlemen, could have sanctioned.

SECTION 8. OF THE COPLEY MEDALS.

An important distinction exists between scientific communications, which
seems to have escaped the notice of the Councils of the Royal Society.
They may contain discoveries of new principles,--of laws of nature
hitherto unobserved; or they may consist of a register of observations
of known phenomena, made under new circumstances, or in new and peculiar
situations on the face of our planet. Both these species of additions to
our knowledge are important; but their value and their rarity are very
different in degree. To make and to repeat observations, even with those
trifling alterations, which it is the fashion in our country (in the
present day) to dignify with the name of discoveries, requires merely
inflexible candour in recording precisely the facts which nature has
presented, and a power of fixing the attention on the instruments
employed, or phenomena examined,--a talent, which can be much improved
by proper Instruction, and which is possessed by most persons of
tolerable abilities and education.* To discover new principles, and to
detect the undiscovered laws by which nature operates, is another and
a higher task, and requires intellectual qualifications of a very
different order: the labour of the one is like that of the computer of
an almanac; the inquiries of the other resemble more the researches of
the accomplished analyst, who has invented the formula: by which those
computations are performed.

[*That the use even of the large astronomical instruments in a national
observatory, does not require any very profound acquirements, is not
an opinion which I should have put forth without authority. The
Astronomer-Royal ought to be the best judge.

On the minutes of the Cou