What with the lame dog condition of Tyndall and Hirst and Spencer and my own recurrent illnesses, the x is not satisfactory. But I don't see that much will come from putting new patches in. The x really has no raison d'etre beyond the personal attachment of its original members. Frankland told me of the names that had been mentioned, and none could be more personally welcome to me...but somehow or other they seem out of place in the x. However, I am not going to stand out against the general wish, and I shall agree to anything that is desired. [Again:--] The club has never had any purpose except the purely personal object of bringing together a few friends who did not want to drift apart. It has happened that these cronies had developed into big-wigs of various kinds, and therefore the club has incidentally--I might say accidentally--had a good deal of influence in the scientific world. But if I had to propose to a man to join, and he were to say, Well, what is your object? I should have to reply like the needy knife-grinder, "Object, God bless you, sir, we've none to show." [As he wrote elsewhere (loc. cit.):--] Later on, there were attempts to add other members, which at last became wearisome, and had to be arrested by the agreement that no proposition of that kind should be entertained, unless the name of the new may be suggested contained all the consonants absent from the names of the old ones. In the lack of Slavonic friends this decision put an end to the possibility of increase. [After the death, in February 1892, of Hirst, a most devoted supporter of the club, who "would, I believe, represent it in his sole person rather than pass the day over," only one more meeting took place, in the following month. With five of the six survivors domiciled far from town, meeting after meeting fell through, until the treasurer wrote, "My idea is that it is best to let it die out unobserved, and say nothing about its decease to anyone." Thus it came to pass that the March meeting of the club in 1893 remained its last. No ceremony ushered it out of existence. Its end exemplified a saying of Sir J. Hooker's "At our ages clubs are an anachronism." It had met 240 times, yet, curious to say, although the average attendance up to 1883 was seven out of nine, the full strength of the club only met on twenty-seven occasions. CHAPTER 1.19. 1865.