the Committee by not allowing them to be read in the first place. Also—though papers were rarely subjected to formal review—there is evidence of editorial intervention, with Banks himself or a trusted deputy proposing cuts or emendations to particular contributions. Publishing in the Philosophical Transactions carried a high degree of prestige and Banks himself attributed an attempt to unseat him, relatively early in his Presidency, to the envy of authors whose papers had been rejected from the journal. Nineteenth century Transactions continued steadily through the turn of the century and into the 1820s. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, a movement to reform the Royal Society rose. The reformers felt that the scientific character of the Society had been undermined by the admission of too many gentleman dilettantes under Banks. In proposing a more limited membership, to protect the Society's reputation, they also argued for systematic, expert evaluation of papers for Transactions by named referees. Sectional Committees, each with responsibility for a particular group of disciplines, were initially set up in the 1830s to adjudicate the award of George IV's Royal Medals. But individual members of these committees were soon put to work reporting on and evaluating papers submitted to the Royal Society. These evaluations began to be used as the basis of recommendations to the Committee of Papers, who would then rubber-stamp decisions made by the Sectional Committees. Despite its flaws—it was inconsistent in its application and not free of abuses—this system remained at the heart of the Society's procedures for publishing until 1847 when the Sectional Committees were dissolved. However, the practice of sending most papers out for review remained. During the 1850s, the cost of the Transactions to the Society was increasing again (and would keep doing so for the rest of the century); illustrations were always the largest expense. Illustrations had been a natural and essential aspect of the scientific periodical since the later seventeenth century. Engravings (cut into metal plates) were used for detailed illustrations, particularly where realism was required; while wood cuts (and, from the early nineteenth century, wood-engravings) were used for diagrams, as they could be easily combined with letterpress. By the mid-1850s, the Philosophical Transactions was seen as a drain on the Society's finances and the treasurer, Edward Sabine, urged the Committee of Papers to restrict the length and number of papers published in the journal. In 1852, for example, the