the clerk and librarian to the Free Library Board, the great hall of the 

 Albert Institute was most generously placed by the Board at the disposal 

 of the Society for some weeks. 



Your Council immediately thereafter set about collecting from all 

 parts of the country scientific apparatus, natural history specimens, &c., 

 &c. — many objects of great general interest being thus got together. 

 In this work, as well as in the arrangement, your Council was greatly 

 aided by a number of members, who proved themselves most zealous 

 and active workers, and who deserve well of the Society ; in particular, 

 your Council must mention Mr A. C. Lamb, who undertook the general 

 superintendence of the whole exhibition, bestowing much time, energy, 

 and talent in making the arrangements most complete. 



The exhibition was felicitously opened by ex-Provost Eobertson on 

 the 21st of January, at a conversazione of members, associates, and 

 their friends, on which occasion the whole of the Albert Institute, in- 

 cluding the picture gallery and museum, was thrown open to the excep- 

 tionally large company that thronged the rooms. The exhibition was 

 kept open for two weeks thereafter, from 22d January to 4th February 

 inclusive, and was visited nightly by great numbers of interested and 

 intelligent enquirers after natural knowledge — on several evenings being 

 so inconveniently crowded that arrangements had to be made for 

 opening the picture gallery and ante-rooms in order to relieve the pres- 

 sure in the Great Hall. It is pleasant to record that many of these 

 visitors expressed themselves as grateful to the Society for thus afford- 

 ing them the means of becoming acquainted not only with the pheno- 

 mena by which in our own day science has been enriched, but the 

 appliances by which scientific men have widened its boundaries. 



Your Council cannot speak too highly of the members who out of 

 their own enthusiasm for science gave so abundantly to those who 

 visited the exhibition night after night. Many, willing and able, were 

 found by the tables looking after the microscopes, and explaining the 

 numerous objects, keeping the apparatus in order, or pointing out their 

 various uses and applications, seeking no other reward than to interest 

 and instruct. Two experimental lectures were also given in the long 

 room of the Institute — one on "Polarisation," the other on "Magnets 

 and Magnetic Curves" — both being attended by large audiences ; as was 

 also Mr James Brebner's lecture on " Zermatt, and its environs," given 

 in the same room, and illustrated with numerous beautiful views. 

 These table demonstrations and experimental lectures have always 

 been an interesting feature of our exhibitions, and have given them a 



