3 AUGUST 1907, Page 26

The Royal Society Archives : Classified Papers, 1606-1741. Com- piled

by A. H. Church, D.Sc., F.R.S. (Printed for the Author.)— The Royal Society was a development of the Philosophical Society, and with this was connected a Committee of Trades. Hence the inclusion of papers dating earlier than 1662, the year of the Society's first charter. Then early in its existence it received a gift of the Arundel Library, and in this, it is probable, some still older documents. What Dr. Church has done has been to make an index of authors' names (distinguished by type into Fellows of the Society and others), and of papers contributed by them, arranged as to their subjects in twenty-two categories. It will be understood that the Society occupied itself with a wider range of subjects than it does now. Class XVI., for instance, includes " Grammar, Chronology, History, and Antiquities." So Dr. W. Stukeley is found in 1741 reviewing a Latin version of the Psalms, written, by the way, more than a hundred years before.