In the sixth number of the Journal of the Institution the lectures of Young, and in the seventh number the lectures of Davy, which began on January 21, are mentioned by Young thus:
As the object of the Journals is to present to their readers discussions tending either to practical utility or to the illustrations of the principles of science, so particulars of any mode of demonstration either new or not commonly known that may occur in the lectures will be noticed.
Not that anything like an abstract is intended, for this may be found in the compendiums already published; but it may be the more proper to notice some experiments as it has not been possible to introduce an enumeration of experiments into those compendiums.
In a meeting of the Committee of Chemistry of the Institution on the 20th of January it was resolved that—
The Committee of Chemistry, having taken into consideration the present state of knowledge respecting the history of metallic alloys, and being of opinion that this branch of chemistry (so eminently important to science and so useful to various arts) has not been hitherto investigated with due accuracy, resolve that a series of experiments shall be made in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, in order to ascertain with all possible precision the physical and chemical properties of these metallic compounds.
This is probably the germ of Faraday’s investigation of the alloys of steel.
Count Rumford moved that all the stock 7,000l. in the funds belonging to the Institution should be sold out to pay for the new buildings and other debts.
Early in February it was resolved that each proprietor should have an extra transferable ticket, ‘to facilitate the admission of such artists and mechanics as may derive advantage from the public lectures delivered at the Institution, which will give admittance to the gallery only of the great lecture room and to no other part of the house.
‘Resolved,—That this new arrangement, which is intended as an experiment, do continue as long as the managers shall deem it expedient.’
On April 12 Count Rumford passed a resolution to increase the payments of life subscribers to forty guineas and of annual subscribers to four guineas, and to elect a new class of subscribers to the lectures only, the payment being two guineas. A requisition had been drawn up and signed to call a general meeting of the proprietors to enlarge the body of managers and visitors to fifteen, and to stop the election of more proprietors. Count Rumford did not sign this requisition. The managers who signed it were Winchelsea, Morton, Pelham, Banks, Sullivan, and Hatchett.