L. August 27, 1674 Present,

Sir W. Petty, Vice-President,
Sir John Lowther,
Sir John Cutler,
Sir Christopher Wren,
Mr. Oldenburgh,
Sir Paul Neile.

"It was considered by this Council, that to make the Society prosper,
good experiments must be in the first place provided to make the
weekly meetings considerable, and that the expenses for making these
experiments must be secured by legal subscriptions for paying the
contributors; which done, the Council might then with confidence proceed
to the EJECTION OF USELESS FELLOWS."

The reformers of modern times were less energetic in the measures they
recommended. Dr. Wollaston and some others thought the limitation of
the numbers of the Society to be the most essential point, and 400 was
suggested as a proper number to be recommended, in case a limitation
should be ultimately resolved upon. I confess, such a limit did not
appear to me to bring great advantages, especially when I reflected
how long a time must have elapsed before the 714 members of the Society
could be reduced by death to that number. And I also thought that as
long as those who alone sustained the reputation of the Society by their
writings and discoveries should be admitted into it on precisely
the same terms, and on the payment of the same sum of money as other
gentlemen who contributed only with their purse, it could never be an
object of ambition to any man of science to be enrolled on its list.

With this view, and also to assist those who wished for a limitation, I
suggested a plan extremely simple in its nature, and which would become
effective immediately. I proposed that, in the printed list of the Royal
Society, a star should be placed against the name of each Fellow who
had contributed two or more papers which had been printed in the
Transactions, or that such a list should be printed separately at the
end.

At that period there were 109 living members who had contributed papers
to the Transactions, and they were thus arranged:

37 Contributors of.. 1 paper
21.......... 2 papers
19.......... 3 ditto
5 .......... 4 ditto
3 .......... 5 ditto
3 .......... 6 ditto
]2.... from 7 to 12 ditto
14... of more than 12 papers.

100 Contributing Fellows of the Royal Society. 589 Papers contributed by
them.

Now the immediate effect of printing such a list would be the division
of the Society into two classes. Supposing two or more paper