134 The Sixteenth General Meeting. 



whose warm sympathy and cordial co-operation with the work 

 of the Society, and whose generous hospitality on the occasion of 

 the annual gathering at Salisbury in 1865, will be fresh in the 

 recollection of all the members of the Society. 



" With regard to finance, it will be enough to say that our funds 

 have increased to £270 from about £250, which was the sum 

 announced in last year's report as then in hand ; and this, not- 

 withstanding that the Society has engaged in an extra work of 

 publication be3'ond the ordinary Magazine. For in addition to 

 two numbers of the Magazine which have been issued this year 

 (reaching to the thirty-fourth number, and beginning the twelfth 

 volume of that publication), your Committee desires to call your 

 particular attention to the first part of the volume on the Black- 

 more Museum, which we have printed during this year, and which 

 has been gratuitously circulated amongst the members of the 

 Society, a publication containing papers of extraordinary archaDo- 

 logical interest, as well as recording a brief history of the Museum 

 and its inauguration in the autumn of 18G7, when its munificent 

 founder, Mr. William Blackmore, entrusted its care to his native 

 city of Salisbury. 



"The Museum and Library of our Society at Devizes have been 

 enriched by sundry benefactions, which have been acknowledged 

 in the Magazine ; one of the last and not the least interesting of 

 which is the gift, by Major Perry Keene, of the original inquisition 

 on the body of Ruth Pierce of Devizes Market-cross celebrity. 



" Your Committee at the same time desires again to remind you 

 that the want of a suitable building as a Museum has again 

 necessitated the rejection of many ofiered gifts ; and we have 

 within the last few days been compelled, for lack of available space, 

 to decline the generous proposal of contributing to our archa30- 

 logical and natural history collections objects which were too bulky 

 for us in our present straightened space to stow away. 



"Your Committee, in concluding this report, desires again to 

 commend to your active and continued co-operation the work of 

 the Society ; assuring jovl that neither the natural history nor the 

 archseology of the county is by any means exhausted, and remind- 



