account goes on steadily increasing ; it now amounts 

 to £391. 13s. 4d., and, unless some prompt and decisive 

 steps are at once taken to remove it, by the appropri- 

 ation of Shares or a per Centage upon the present 

 existing Shares, threatens at no very distant period, 

 accumulating as it does at compound interest, to become 

 a source of considerable embarrassment. The Council 

 would urge upon Members of the Society generally 

 attention to the subject ; for although it may be alleged, 

 perhaps with some show of justice, that it is an affair 

 which peculiarly belongs to the Proprietary Members, 

 yet it must be admitted it most intimately concerns 

 all who are anxious for the well-being of the Society. 



The debt upon the ordinary account is also con- 

 siderable, amounting to £205. 2s. lOd. This is not 

 occasioned by any profuse or unusual expenditure, 

 which indeed has in some particulars been less than 

 usual, but in part from a deficiency in the annual sub- 

 scriptions, occasioned by death and other causes, and in 

 part from the heavier pressure of local taxation from 

 which a few years past the Society was wholly ex- 

 empted. This the Council look forward with much 

 satisfaction to shortly again being the case, as it is 

 hoped the Bills now before Parliament will for the 

 future legally exonerate all similar scientific and literary 

 Societies from such burthens. 



