At the Tercentenary Conversazione, Dr Wilder Penfield, O.M., F.R.S., presented the President with a new table for the Mace, the Gift of the Canadian Fellows, with these words: ‘Your Royal Highness, Mr President: ‘The twenty-four Fellows of the Royal Society who live in Canada, offer you this table for the Mace. It was made for us here in England, according to the design of Professor Russell, made from Canadian walnut and capped, I am told, with leather from Canadian Caribou. ‘We have come a long way to join you in this Tercentenary Celebration. We are here because we prize, as you do, the heritage of mind and spirit that comes to us as it does to you. We are not honorary members nor foreign delegates, but ordinary Fellows, subjects of the Queen returning across the Ocean, within the Commonwealth. ‘All this would have seemed a strange and unbelievable state of affairs in the year 1660. The founding Fellows would have been shocked, I suspect, to learn how membership has spread to Cambridge! And King Charles would never have credited the prediction that one day Fellows, working in the new world, might strive to equal and sometimes hope to surpass the achievements of those at home. ‘Since that time, the Royal Society of London has become the most distinguished, as it is the oldest, learned society in the world. It is the strong citadel of the freedom of thought.