422 Proceedings. 



Commonwealth Government on the subject, and that the matter has also been 

 discussed at the meeting of the Australasian Association. 1 hope that these gentle- 

 men may be able to furnish us with some idea of the shape that the proposed visit 

 will eventually take. It is possible, however, that the final arrangements will not 

 be made until the meeting of the British Association to be held in Birmingham 

 next September. 



In the report of the Standing Committee there is a reference to the excessive 

 cost incurred in printing certain papers in Vol. 43 of the Transactions, and a sug- 

 gestion is made that after this year the Publication Committee should submit to 

 the annual meeting an estimate of the cost of publishing each paper selected for 

 the annual volume. While not desirous of unduly hampering the actions of the 

 Publication Committee, I am decidedly of opinion that it is the duty of this Board 

 to exercise a closer superintendence over the expenditure on the annual volume. 

 To make the reason for this clear, I w'ill remark that Vol. 43 of the Transactions 

 cost £'648 ; that in the same year the printing of the general index to the first 

 forty volumes cost =t'60 ; and that there was an additional payment of £2% for part 

 of the Proceedings. In other words, the printer's bill for the year amounted to 

 no less than i736. or i'236 in excess of the annual subsidy. Now, I do not say 

 that the printing represented by this large sum w-as not of advantage to the Insti- 

 tute, or that the material printed was unworthy of publication ; but I do hold 

 that no committee, without previous authority from the Board of Governors, should 

 incur an expenditure so largely in excess of the revenue of the Institute. In 

 making this statement I am anxious that it should be fully understood that I am 

 quite sensible of the services that successive Publication Committees have rendered 

 to the Institute, and that I am fully convinced that they have acted with a sincere 

 desire to further its objects. But granting all that, there are so many objections 

 which can be raised to unauthorized expenditure of the kind that I have mentioned 

 that it appears highly desirable that the Board of Governors, at each of its annual 

 meetings, should vote some specified sum, or in some way indicate what amount 

 should be expended in the publication of the annual volume. 



Another important reason can be urged in support of this conclusion, ihe 

 annual meeting of the Board of Governors is the only meeting where the repre- 

 sentatives of the whole of the incorporated Societies can vinite in discussing the 

 affairs of the Institute and take part in the management of its work. In the 

 interval between the annual meetings the conduct of affairs is entrusted partly to 

 the Publication Committee, which is usually — and, I think, quite unnecessarily — 

 confined to members of two, or at the most three, Societies, and partly to the 

 Standing Committee, which is even more limited in its composition, for it prac- 

 tically consists of Wellington residents. No doubt there are difficulties in pro- 

 viding any other form of management, but these difficulties make it highly desir- 

 able that as much as possible of the work of the Institute in all its departments 

 should be arranged for and ordered at the annual meeting of the Board of 

 Governors. 



