XU PROCEEDINGS OE THE 



In many respects this success has been unprecedented in our 

 annals. 



Advei'ting, in the first place, to that element without which all 

 the talent and energy and zeal of our Fellows would be unavail- 

 ing, — the financial condition of the Society, — I have the greatest 

 satisfaction in directing your attention to the Auditors' report, 

 by which I find that the income has exceeded that of any former 

 year, for a period certainly of the last thirty years — amounting 

 to no less than £1345. It is true that our expenses have been 

 large — in some respects, considerably larger than usual ; but when 

 we look at the character of our publications, and at the gratifying 

 fact that we have paid off the only two bonds remaining at the last 

 Anniversary, and that we are now able, for the first time for more 

 than thirty years, to declare ourselves free from bonded or other 

 debt, and with such a balance in our favour as to leave us free 

 from all anxiety on this head, I am sure you wiU respond cordi- 

 ally to an expression of thankfidness for our unprecedented pros- 

 perity, which enables us to keep up the high tone of our pub- 

 lications and to carry out all the objects of the Society, without 

 the distressing and depressing consciousness of perpetual debt. 

 And now I cannot but express my most anxious desire that, in the 

 course of the year on which we have entered, we may be enabled 

 to increase, by however moderate a sum, that funded capital to 

 which I look as the main condition of permanent prosperity, and 

 as our resource in case of any emergency tliat may occur; for 

 it is surely prudent, and I may say imperative, that we should 

 not recklessly trust to a continuance of the happy state of our 

 finances which we at the present moment enjoy, but determine, 

 at whatever sacrifice, to provide for any future adverse contin- 

 gencies. 



Another very important phase in our present well-being is the 

 number of new Fellows who have been elected in the past year, 

 amounting to no less than thirty-six — a larger number than I have 

 ever known during the long period of forty-five years that I have 

 belonged to the Society, and very greatly in advance of the average. 

 Of late years there has been upon the whole a considerable in- 

 crease : in the year ending in May 1857 there were thirty-one 

 elected, in 1858 there were twenty, and in 1859 twenty-six. All 

 these numbers were considerably above the average of many years ; 

 and when we look at the scientific character of those who have 

 thus recently joined us, we shall find that we have a still higher 



