40 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 



less, gentlemeiij I can safely promise vou that the duties of this 

 position can make no demands upon me that I will not cheerfully 

 meet — and I enter upon the discharge of those duties cheered by 

 the assurance that your valuable aid will be promptly tendered 

 when necessary, and that the old and tried friends of the Society will 

 continue to rally around the cause they have so long cherished. 



Heretofore the duties of this office have been discharged by 

 men who, although farmers, have also been connected with the 

 learned profession or mercantile pursuits. This, I believe, is the 

 first time that one, although a farmer, is chiefly engaged in me- 

 chanical pursuits, has been selected. Your Society has been an 

 earnest patron of the mechanical arts, and the mechanics in re- 

 turn have contributed essentially to your prosperity as a Society. 



With an ardent desire for your success, I assure you, gentle- 

 men, that as a farmer or mechanic, I will do all in my power to 

 secure, what we all so earnestly desire, the success of the Society. 



The thanks of the Society were then, on motion of L. T. Allen, 

 Esq., voted to the retiring President, and the gentlemen who had 

 addressed the meetings ; and their addresses were ordered printed 

 in the Transactions of the Society. 



