Joseph Banks. The earliest records of this useful
society are filled with accounts of experiments on the Baconian
inductive principle, many of which now appear to us puerile, but which
were valuable in the childhood of science. Among the labours of the
society while in Fleet Street, we may enumerate its efforts to promote
inoculation, 1714-1722; electrical experiments on fourteen miles of
wires near Shooter's Hill, 1745; ventilation, _apropos_ of gaol fever,
1750; discussions on Cavendish's improved thermometers, 1757; a medal to
Dollond for experiments on the laws of light, 1758; observations on the
transit of Venus, in 1761; superintendence of the Observatory at
Greenwich, 1765; observations of the transit of Venus in the Pacific,
1769 (Lieutenant Cook commenced the expedition); the promotion of an
Arctic expedition, 1773; the _Racehorse_ meteorological observations,
1773; experiments on lightning conductors by Franklin, Cavendish, &c.,
1772. The removal of the society was, as we have said, at first strongly
objected to, and in a pamphlet published at the time, the new purchase
is thus described: "The approach to it, I confess, is very fair and
handsome, through a long court; but, then, they have no other property
in this than in the street before it, and in a heavy rain a man may
hardly escape being thoroughly wet before he can pass through it. The
front of the house towards the garden is nearly half as long again as
that towards Crane Court. Upon the ground floor there is a little hall,
and a direct passage from the stairs into the garden, and on each side
of it a little room. The stairs are easy, which carry you up to the next
floor. Here there is a room fronting the court, directly over the hall;
and towards the garden is the meeting-room, and at the end another, also
fronting the garden. There are three rooms upon the next floor. These
are all that are as yet provided for the reception of the society,
except you will have the garrets, a platform of lead over them, and the
usual cellars, &c., below, of which they have more and better at Gresham
College."

When the society got settled, by Newton's order the porter was clothed
in a suitable gown and provided with a staff surmounted by the arms of
the society in silver, and on the meeting nights a lamp was hung out
over the entrance to the court from Fleet Street. The repository was
built at the rear of the house, and thither the society's museum was
removed. The fi