If, however, the list of the Members of the Society were read over to the Council, and the names of those gentlemen known to be conversant with chemical science were written down; then, if nineteen copies of the work were given to those nineteen persons on this list, who had contributed most to the Transactions of the Society, they would in all probability be placed in the fittest hands.
Complete sets of the Philosophical Transactions have now become extremely bulky; it might be well worth our consideration, whether the knowledge of the many valuable papers they contain would not be much spread, by publishing the abstracts of them which have been read at the ordinary meetings of the Society.

Perhaps two or three volumes octavo, would contain all that has been done in this way during the last century.
Another circumstance, which would contribute much to the order of the proceedings of the Council, would be to have a distinct list made out of all the statutes and orders of the Council relating to each particular subject.
Thus the President, by having at one view before him all that had ever been decreed on the question under consideration, would be much better able to prevent inconsistent resolutions, and to save the time of the Council from being wasted by unnecessary discussions.
SECTION 6.

ORDER OF MERIT.
Amongst the various proposals for encouraging science, the institution of an order of merit has been suggested.

It is somewhat singular, that whilst in most of the other kingdoms of Europe, such orders exist for the purpose of rewarding, by honorary distinctions, the improvers of the arts of life, or successful discoverers in science, nothing of the kind has been established in England.

[At the great meeting of the philosophers at Berlin, in 1828, of which an account is given in the Appendix; the respect in which Berzelius, Oersted, Gauss, and Humboldt were held in their respective countries was apparent in the orders bestowed on them by the Sovereigns of Sweden, of Denmark, of Hanover, and of Prussia; and there were present many other philosophers, whose decorations sufficiently attested the respect in which science was held in the countries from which they came.] Our orders of knighthood are favourable only to military distinction.
It has been urged, as an argument for such institutions, that they are a cheap mode of rewarding science, whilst, on the other hand, it has been objected, that they would diminish the value of such honorary distinctions by making them common.