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The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. The first volume issued by the Society was the Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, and this later edition of that work includes additional narratives about other members of the Hawkins family: Richard's grandfather William, his father Sir John and his cousin William. The volume was 'intended to be a monograph of the naval enterprises of the great Elizabethan navigators of the name of Hawkins', from voyages to Brazil in the reign of Henry VIII to the foundation of the East India Company in 1600.

Finance—Members—Meetings—House Accommodation. T he power of forwarding the objects of the Society, of accumulating geographical information and making it available, of furthering and assisting exploration and discovery, depends upon the support received by the Society from the public. It is only on the condition that the Geographical Society's work is felt and recognised to be work of national importance, that it can be efficiently and continuously performed. The great object of the Founders of the Society, and of their Successors, has been, by activity and diligence, to establish the Society's reputation, and to prove the value of its labours. Through evil report and through good report, the work has been steadfastly pushed forward during half a century; and successive Members of the Council have given their time and abilities, in ungrudging measure, to the Society's business. It is this unostentatious work, this attention to the measures for increasing the number of Members, to financial details, and to administrative business, upon which the prosperity and well-being of the Society is founded. The Society commenced its operations with 460 Members in 1830, the admission fee being 3 l ., the annual subscription 2 l ., which might be compounded for by one payment of 20 l . In the first two years, from July 1830 to March 1832, the receipts amounted to 5239 l ., and it was the original plan of the Council to form a reserve fund by investing the sums received as compositions, and to meet current expenses with the amount represented by annual subscriptions.

N ext , in usefulness and importance, to the operations of the Geographical Society in the field, are the measures for recording the results of discoveries, for disseminating knowledge, for providing instruction and information, and for encouraging educational measures connected with the study of geography. In the first year of the Society's existence the form of our ‘J ournal ’ was decided upon by the Council, and the first volume was published in octavo, as at present, containing 264 pages, illustrated by eight maps. The first six volumes were edited by the first Secretary, Captain Maconochie, r.n. , and in addition to the papers, contained analyses of recent publications, and miscellaneous geographical information. The two succeeding Secretaries, Captain Washington, r.n. , and Colonel Jackson, continued the same plan of giving analyses of books, and in 1837 it was resolved that all the maps should be engraved on copper. In order to supply the information as rapidly as possible, the ‘Journal’ was published in two parts, in May and November, and for a short time, in 1839 and 1840, it came out in three parts, in February, May and November. A very useful addition was also made, in those years, in the shape of lists of geographical works and maps recently published. But in 1842 the issue of two parts during the year was reverted to, and in 1847 the analyses and miscellaneous information were discontinued.

W hen the prosperity of the Society rapidly began to increase under the fostering care of Admiral Smyth and Sir Roderick Murchison, it was not long before active aid to labourers in the field began again to combine with rewards for work achieved, in the furtherance of the cause of geography. As the funds of the Society increased, the encouragement and power to assist explorers increased also, but such aid mainly took the direction of African discovery. In briefly recording the Society's work, it will be convenient to treat of each continent or great division of the globe separately, beginning with Asia, and then taking in order Africa, Australia, America, and finally the Arctic Regions. So far as English labours are concerned, the most important Asiatic exploration has been undertaken from India, and generally under the orders of the Survey Department. It was therefore a well merited recognition of the value of the Indian Surveys when, in 1857, the Patron's Gold Medal was awarded to Sir Andrew Scott Waugh. The grant was made for his able extensions of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, and especially for his work in fixing 79 Himalayan peaks, one of which—Mount Everest (29,002 ft.)—is the loftiest mountain in the world. After his retirement in 1861 Sir Andrew Waugh was many years a Member of our Council, and a Vice-President, actively assisting us, almost until his lamented death in February 1878.

T he progress that has been made in the science of geography since the Society was founded is only partially shown by a comparison of an atlas of 1830 with the maps of the present day. For this progress is not alone comprised, in the discovery and delineation of unknown countries. Its range is far wider. There have also been great improvements in the methods of investigation, in systematic arrangement of facts, in cartography, and in the construction and use of instruments. At the same time the most striking advances have been made in the work of discovery, and in completing our general knowledge of the earth's surface, preliminary to more systematic and detailed surveys. Yet, bearing in mind that the first discoveries are merely reconnaissances, it may safely be said that, great as our progress has been during the last half century, it only represents a very small fraction of what remains to be done. Glancing first at the Arctic Regions, which had attracted so much attention during the period from the peace in 1815 to the attempt of Parry to push northwards from Spitzbergen in 1827, in 1830 only unconnected strips of coast line had been traced along the coast of Arctic America, and it was unknown whether there was a passage along that coast to Fury and Hecla Straits. Baffin's Bay had been re-discovered, and Parry had pushed westward along Barrow Strait to Melville Island, but nothing was known of the region between Barrow Strait and the continent.

O n Monday, the 24th. of May, 1830, there was a numerously-attended General Meeting of the Raleigh Travellers' Club, with Mr. Barrow in the Chair. It was then submitted:— “That a Society was needed whose sole object should be the promotion and diffusion of that most important and entertaining branch of knowledge—geography; and that a useful Society might therefore be formed, under the name of the G eographical S ociety O f L ondon : that the interest excited by this department of science is universally felt, that its advantages are of the first importance to mankind in general, and paramount to the welfare of a maritime nation like Great Britain, with its numerous and extensive foreign possessions; that its decided utility in conferring just and distinct notions of the physical and political relations of our globe must be obvious to every one, and is the more enhanced by this species of knowledge being obtainable without much difficulty, while at the same time it affords a copious source of rational amusement; and finally that, although there is a vast store of geographical information existing in Great Britain, yet it is so scattered and dispersed, either in large books that are not generally accessible, or in the bureaus of public departments, or in the possession of private individuals, as to be nearly unavailable to the public.”

In 1880, the Royal Geographical Society commissioned Sir Clements R. Markham, a noted British geographer and the Society's secretary, to write a history of its formation, and of the many expeditions it had supported since 1830, to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. Published in 1881, The Fifty Years' Work of the Royal Geographical Society consists of twelve chapters. The first five are a condensed history of the original group of geographers who called themselves the Raleigh Club, and the events leading up to the Society's official formation. Chapters 6 and 7 recount the activities of past presidents, secretaries and leading members of the Society, with the rest of the book detailing the fascinating scientific expeditions the Society sponsored financially from the Arctic to Antarctica, the explorers who took part in them, and the various publications the Society published to advance natural science and exploration.

T he Royal Geographical Society completed the fiftieth year of its existence on the 16th of July, 1880, and its fiftieth anniversary meeting took place on the 31st of May, 1880. In order to celebrate this auspicious event, and also to supply a useful means of reference to Fellows, I have been commissioned by the Council to write the present brief history of the Society. My plan is to give, in four introductory chapters, a condensed view of the ways and means by which the work undertaken by the Society was performed previous to the date of its formation, and of the circumstances which immediately led to its being brought into existence. The fifth chapter contains a history of the original formation of the Geographical Society. The sixth and seventh chapters are devoted to memorial accounts of the Presidents, Secretaries, and other leading members of the governing body. The eighth and ninth review the career of the Geographical Society with reference to the expeditions which it has helped, or actively promoted, including grants-in-aid, and awards in recognition of the services of eminent geographers and travellers. The history of the various publications of the Society, of the rise and progress of the library and map-room, and of the educational measures adopted by the Council, forms the subject of the tenth chapter; and the eleventh reviews the progress of the Society as regards members, finances, places of meeting, and house accommodation.

The Archaeological Journal, 34, 107-120