The Virginia Gazette

March 11. The Council of the Royal Society attended his Majesty, and presented an elegant Address, in which they express their Acknowledgments of his Royal Patronage, and thanked him for his princely Benefactions, which will enable them to pursue the great Ends of their Institution.

This being ended, our gracious King, himself a Master of the fine Arts, instituted a new Order, called THE ORDER OF KNIGHTS COMPANIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY, which is to be entirely confined to the Members of that Body, in Order to encourage philosophick and literary Merit; and knighted the President, James Burrows, Esquire. His Majesty is Governor and Patron of this Order.

The Royal Society took its Origin from a Company of learned and ingenious Men who met for the Encouragement of natural Knowledge, and useful Arts, in 1651. The chief of these, at the first Assembly, were Sir W. Petty, the wise and opulent Ancestor of the present Earl of Shelburne, Doctor Bathurst, Doctor Wren, &c. who met at Oxford. King Charles II. was their Patron, and from him they received their Charter in 1662. It consists of a President, two Secretaries, and a Council of twenty one Persons, chosen from amongst the Members. There were lately near 400 national Members, including near forty Peers of the Realm. There is a Class of corresponding Members abroad, in Number about 150, which includes all the most celebrated Literati in Europe; among whom are D'Alembert, Linnaeus, the Swedish Naturalist, Buffon, the French Naturalist, Bonnet, Euler, Jussieu, Bernoulli, Maupertuis, La Nauze, Don Ulloa, the late Governor of New Orleans, Baron Van Swieten, the Physician of Vienna, Voltaire, together with the Sovereigns of Prussia and Poland.

The Royal Society unites those Objects which the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and that of Inscriptions, have divided between them; that is to say, the Deep Sciences and the Belles Lettres. Every Man, whatever his Station, Englishman or Foreigner, whenever he has made any Observation which he thinks worthy the Attention of the Society, is admitted to propose it viva voce, or by presenting a Memorial.

The Founders of this Society did it all for Honour, and nothing to advance the Fortune of its Members, who are to this Day obliged to defray all their Expences out of their own Pockets. They either pay forty Guineas at their Admission, or contribute four Guineas a Year to the Society, and sometimes more upon an extraordinary Emergency. These Contributions serve to furnish out a Cabinet of Natural History, to defray a very extensive and costly Correspondence, and to support a heavy Expense in making Experiments, either to come at new Discoveries, or to confirm those which have already been made.

So much for this august Institution which many People on the Continent not being yet acquainted with, it was thought proper to give these Elucidations for their Amusement and Information.