Plinian Society

The Plinian Society was a club at the University of Edinburgh for students interested in natural history. It was founded in 1823. Several of its members went on to have prominent careers, most notably Charles Darwin who announced his first scientific discoveries at the society.

The society was initiated and promoted by three brothers from Berwickshire. John Baird, the oldest brother, was the first president of the society and at the inaugural meeting on 14 January 1823 he made a statement of the proposed plan and objectives of the society. He drew up an elaborate code of laws for the society, in eighteen chapters. The original members included James Hardie and J. Grant Malcomson who later became geologists in India, and John Coldstream. The Regius Professor of Natural History, Robert Jameson, had previously established the Wernerian Natural History Society for graduates and professors. He was given the title of Senior Honorary Member by the students, but never attended the Plinian and was not its founder.

From Darwin's description, the Plinian "consisted of students and met in an underground room in the university for the sake of reading papers on natural science and discussing them." Activities also included excursions to the countryside around Edinburgh. Meetings appear to have been weekly, until at the society's request, Jameson put their case to the university for a room in his museum for their meetings and their own small "museum", but the outcome was that the rent on their old room was raised and they eventually agreed to rent the Speculative Society's room for meetings on alternate Tuesdays. Papers presented by the students were often of high quality, inspired by their lecturers. Commonly, papers took the form of a critique of the work of established experts, together with the student's own thoughts. They covered a wide range of subjects including the circulation of ocean currents, identification of plants found in the nearby countryside, the anatomy of sea animals they had collected and principles of classification.

Meetings included a great deal of procedure, with votes on motions and resolutions, and an annual reassessment of the elaborate rules. At that time each meeting was attended by around 25 members, including the five joint presidents, secretary, treasurer, "museum curator" and five members of the council. Around 150 past and present members were on the books. Most were medical undergraduates, with three or four who had graduated being referred to as "Dr" in the minutes. Several were legal students or humanities students, and a fair number of students from England reflected the numbers of nonconformists who were barred from attending the universities in England which required Anglicanism, and instead went to university in Scotland. Professors did not attend, and a December 1826 visit by one professor who intended to donate his latest publication as a reference book was greeted with indignation and a sarcastic student newspaper report that "This is the first time, says our correspondent, we remember to have seen one of our Professors in the Plinian Society."

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