CHAPTER XXVII.
F.R.S.
A page or two about my connection with the Royal Society may have some small interest.

When my father (who had long been a Fellow) died in 1844, I wished to give to the Society his marble bust by Behnes as a memorial of honour to him; but my mother preferred to keep it, as was natural.

Meanwhile, however, some of my father's friends, and in particular his old patron, Lord Melbourne, then recently elected, put me up as a candidate, and as I find recorded in my Archive-book, vol.ii., my certificate "was signed by Argyll, Bristol, Henry Hallam, Thomas Brande, Dr.Paris, P.B.C.S., Sir C.M.Clarke, and Sir Benjamin Brodie: in due time I was elected, and on the 8th of May 1845 was admitted by Lord Northampton." At my election occurred this very strange and characteristic incident.

There was only one ball against me among twenty-seven for me in the ballot-box; the meetings were then held at Somerset House, the Society on a less numerous scale than at present, and the elections easier and more frequent.

When the President announced the result, up jumped Lord Melbourne, begging pardon for his mistake in having dropped his ball into the wrong hole!--an amusing instance of the _laissez-faire_ carelessness habitual to that good-humoured Minister.
As I have now been more than forty years a Fellow, I ought to be ashamed to confess that I never contributed a Paper to its learned Proceedings; all of which as they come to me I give appropriately enough to the famous Wotton Library, belonging to my excellent friend Evelyn, heir and successor to the celebrated John Evelyn of the Sylva, one of the Society's founders.