44. SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING, 



exhibitions once were, it seemed evident to the Council that it 

 would not only be to the pecuniary advantage of the Society, but 

 that their means of usefulness as a scientific body virould be greatly 

 extended if they could obtain sufficient space for the prosecution 

 and development of their objects in the more immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of London. 



In seeking for such a situation, the attention of the Council 

 was naturally attracted to the finely situated estate purchased by 

 the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851, out of the surplus 

 proceeds of that Exhibition ; and it appeared to them that the 

 grant by the Commissioners of a certain portion of that estate to 

 the Society would be strictly compatible with, and might even tend 

 largely to promote the means of encouraging Art and Science 

 generally, the furtherance of which was known to he the object for 

 which the Commissioners were incorporated by Royal Charter. 



The Council of the Society, therefore, some time since made 

 an application to the Commissioners of 1851, in order to 

 ascertain how they would be disposed to regard a request from 

 the Horticultural Society for permission to establish itself upon 

 their estate. 



The Commissioners have met this request in a liberal spirit, 

 and it will be the duty of the Council to lay before the present 

 Meeting the conditions on which the Commissioners have an- 

 nounced their readiness to comply with it. 



It may be as well, however, first to point out the situation of 

 the estate, and more particularly of that portion of it which the 

 Commissioners are willing to place at the disposal of the Horti- 



purposes of their Incorporation, forming a parallelogram between 

 the two new roads : Prince Albert Road (one hundred feet wide) to 

 the West, and Exhibition Road (eighty feet wide) to the East : 

 which two roads connect the Kensington Road on the North with 

 the new Cromwell Road (eighty feet wide) on the South. Of 



of about sixteen acres at the South end for the purposes of the 

 Great International Exhibition, which had been projected by the 

 Society of Arts for the year 1861— the intention of holding 

 which has, it is hoped, been but temporarily suspended by the 

 war now unhappily raging ; also a portion at the North end, with a 

 frontage to Hyde Park, well adapted for any public buildings which 



