Your Council are happy to state that the funds of the 

 Society, which have often furnished a theme of lamentation, 

 are at length in a situation of comparative prosperity, a 

 small balance of <£*!. 19s. 3d. being in the Treasurer'*s hands, 

 on account of the Ordinary Fund, previous to the last meet- 

 ing of Council, when other necessary orders of payment were 

 made, which, however, will not very seriously involve your 

 finances. For at least one year it is gratifying to know that 

 the expenditure of the Society has not exceeded its income. — 

 Your Council, however, areawareof the difficulty of conduct- 

 ing the affairs of each particular Session, without occasionally 

 mortgaging a part of the pecuniary means of the succeeding 

 one, — a difficulty which will of course not be diminished by 

 the arrangements which have been recently made relative to 

 the appointment of a stipendiary officer. The handsome 

 balance in the Treasurer''s hands on behalf of the Building 

 Fund, will not escape your particular notice. If there be a 

 circumstance which proves more decisively than any other 

 the increasing estimation in which your Society is held, it 

 is the fact that notwithstanding the large sum expended in 

 the erection of the Hall, there should be, at the close of the 

 Sixth Session, a surplus of nearly «£*1200 at your disposal. 

 In the last Report of your Council, a hope was expressed 

 that measures would be speedily adopted, to occupy the 

 plot of land at the west end, with an additional erection, 

 to contain a new Museum and Lecture Room. On more 

 mature consideration, however, it appeared that the sum 

 required for the proposed supplementary building, was so 

 considerable, that no reasonable expectation could be enter- 

 tained of being able to raise it by the subscriptions of new 

 Proprietary Members for several years. The inconveni- 

 ences of the present Museum and Lecture Room, but 



