The composition of the Fellowship and the Council of the Society

It is well known to most Fellows of the Society that for many years those who had little knowledge of science, or interest in its methods, were freely admitted to its ranks; but this has been less generally realized by some of those who have discussed the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This article has been prepared to show what proportion of the Fellowship was composed of scientific men at various periods of the Society’s history, and to present in a series of tables the statistical material on which the conclusions arrived at have been based. It was the influence of the scientific Fellows after 1820 which led to the revision in 1847 of the statutes governing elections, and this soon changed the whole character of the Society.