Notes

Abstract

FOR the last three or four years we have been treated, in the copy of the Times appearing after the Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society, to strictures of the action of the Council of that body. We have not thought it necessary to reply to these at length, because their origin was pretty well known, and the Royal Society is quite capable of taking care of itself. But this year we think the bounds of journalistic decorum have been passed in a leading article in which the regretted retirement of Lord Rayleigh from the Secretaryship is referred to. The Times states: “He has taken, … the unusual step of declining to sit on the Council, and no one who knows the play of forces within the Society can doubt that his refusal is significant.” This sentence is obviously intended to suggest that Lord Rayleigh's resignation of the position which he has so long adorned, and in which his services have been so greatly valued, is due to a want of sympathy with his colleagues or to a want of respect for them. Lord Rayleigh is absent from England, but we believe that we know enough of the Royal Society and of Lord Rayleigh to warrant us in repelling at once, and, in his absence, the insinuation as unfounded, and as quite unworthy of the journal in which it has been allowed to appear.