On May 16 the managers resolved ‘that the Committee of Science should carry out improvements in the laboratory, that the workshops should be thrown into the laboratory and fitted up as a lecture room for 120 persons.’ For nearly sixty years this laboratory theatre remained unchanged. Other traces of the activity of this Committee of Science are to be found. On May 27 Sir Joseph Banks, in the name of the Committee of Science of the Royal Institution, wrote to the Board of Agriculture: The Committee do not expect in agricultural analysis the same degree of precise accuracy as is necessary in that intended to illustrate philosophical experiments; it will be enough for them if the component parts of substances and their respective proportions to each other are marked with sufficient precision to demonstrate the probable effects on vegetables. The Committee are aware that at present the science of agricultural chemistry is in its infancy, and that till it has been more matured each analysis will take up a considerable portion of time; they trust, however, that it will not be long before Mr. Davy himself, or some one named by him and acting under his superintendence, will undertake the business of analysing soils and manures for individuals at a moderate fixed price for each substance that shall be brought to them. The Royal Institution wish to have Mr. Davy’s lectures repeated at their house, and have desired me to ask whether the Board of Agriculture have any objection to a measure which appears to them likely to extend still further. * * * * * Having been requested to suggest what I think a proper recompense to Mr. Davy on account of his six lectures delivered at the Board, and also a plan for securing his services in future to the Board of Agriculture, I beg leave to propose that sixty guineas be given by the Board to Mr. Davy as a remuneration for his six lectures, being at the rate of ten guineas for each lecture, and that the office of Professor of Chemical Agriculture to the Board, with a salary of 100_l._ a year, be offered to his acceptance; the duty of his professorship to consist of reading lectures in the spring at such time as shall be fixed by the Board, on the application of chemistry to the improvement of the art of agriculture, and in making an analysis of such substances as shall be put into his hands by the Committee, in case he is of opinion that the result of such analysis is likely to throw light on the theory and practice of that most useful art. This Committee of Science also, as early as July 18, proposed that in the ensuing session Mr. Dalton should be engaged to lecture.