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 councillor of the Royal Society, prepared for office by the education of a pleader, could not have mystified his brethren so completely, as to have made them doubt on the point of time. The rules fixed precisely, that the discoveries or experiments rewarded, must be completed and made known to the Royal Society, within the year preceding the day of the award.

Perhaps it might have been a proper mark of respect to this communication, to have convened a special general meeting of the Society, to have made known to the whole body the munificent endowment of their Patron: and when his approbation of the laws which were to govern the distribution of these medals had been intimated to the Council, such a course would have been in complete accordance with the wish expressed in Mr. Peel's letter, "to excite competition amongst men of science," by making them generally known.

Let us now examine the first award of these medals: it is recorded in the following words:—

November 16, 1826. of the medals of His Majesty's donation for the present year was awarded to John Dalton, Esq. President of the Philosophical and Literary Society, Manchester, for his development of the Atomic Theory, and