Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 81.djvu/314

308

charter of the Royal Society of London was signed on July 15, 1662, and exactly two hundred and fifty years thereafter the event has been adequately celebrated. The organization of society in Great Britain makes social functions more successful than they are with us, and the events of the celebration were social rather than scientific. They consisted of a service in Westminster Abbey; a formal reception of the delegates at the rooms of the society in Burlington House; a banquet at the Guild Hall, when toasts were proposed by the prime minister, Lord Morley and the Archbishop of Canterbury; a conversazione at Burlington House; receptions by the king and queen and other entertainments, and the conferring of degrees at Oxford and Cambridge. There were present 132 foreign delegates from universities and learned societies, among whom the United States were represented by 23.

The Royal Society was established at nearly the same time as the Paris