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Through examination of the activities of the X-men within scientific societies this chapter reveals much about the mundane operation of scientific societies, their characteristic organisational structure, the roles of officers, and Victorian expectations as to the roles appropriate to persons of different social statuses. The concerns of the X-men were chiefly with the public image of science, that science be dignified and socially respected, judged by scientific criteria alone. Their specifically professionalizing concerns focused on building the infrastructure for scientific research. They devoted considerable effort to getting themselves elected to high positions in the Royal Society, and ensuring that high birth was no longer a criterion for the presidency. In the Ethnological Society of London, Lubbock, Busk and Huxley sought both scientific and social respectability for the science of man. They succeeded in reuniting the squabbling Ethnological and Anthropological Societies, and in holding the amalgamated Anthropological Institute together. By contrast, in the Linnean Society Hooker lost his long control, largely because Busk and Lubbock refused to act as his lieutenants. Through the British Association they shaped public opinion more widely, using public lectures and presidential addresses to interpret the tendencies and directions of modern science to large audiences.

The chapter examines the routes to careers in science in mid-Victorian England–the ways in which reputations were made, the roles of patrons, and the practice of pluralism (that is, the accumulation of supplementary examining, cataloguing, consulting and other contracts in order to make a middle class income). By comparing the early careers of Tyndall and Lubbock the chapter shows that scientific recognition in the Victorian period was based on both social status and scientific achievement; recognition came more easily to the well-born than to the lowly. The chapter then examines the earliest efforts of the X network – led initially by Hooker – to reform scientific institutions, for example, to make the elite but moribund Linnean Society useful to serious researchers. More frequent publication of the society’s journal was a priority that the X-men demonstrated again in other societies. By the late 1850s Hooker and his friends were secure enough in their own careers to move beyond personal concerns. They began to promote broader recognition and appreciation of science and scientific men, for example, by getting men of science elected to the elite Athenaeum Club. Their first collaborative efforts to shape public opinion through journalism date from this time.

In which natural history leaves behind its medieval phase and becomes a modern science. John Ray develops a more systemic taxonomy using trinomial Latin descriptions of plants and animals, a system later modified and improved by Linnaeus. The lives and travels of both Ray and Linnaeus are discussed at some length, as is Ray’s role in the creation of natural theology.