238 The Thirty-Seventh Annual Meeting. 
remembrance by the Society as the author of “ The Flowering Plants 
of Wilts, with Sketches of the Physical Geography and Climate of 
the County ”—the most complete work we have on Wiltshire botany. 
Mr. Preston was for many years our Local Secretary at Marlborough, 
where he had done much to advance the study of natural history, 
not only in our own county, but in the country at large, by his 
lectures at the College. It may be observed that, in the preface to 
his book, Mr. Preston bears testimony to the value of earlier work 
in the same direction, the results of which have been recorded in our 
Magazine. We regret his loss, and wish him well in his new home. 
“Such losses should stimulate us to fresh exertions, not only to 
add to our numbers, which have never yet quite reached four hundred, 
though we think that in a large county like ours this might be 
achieved with a little exertion on the part of the Local Secretaries 
and of our Members, scattered as they are in all parts of the county, 
but also to maintain the high repute of our Society, which cannot 
by any means yet be said to have fulfilled its mission or to have 
exhausted the archzological and natural history of a county second 
to none in its resources for research. 
“Such thoughts are forced upon our mind all the more keenly 
when we are called upon to record our profound regret at the with- 
drawal of the Rev. A. C. Smith, owing to failing health, from the 
post of Honorary Secretary and Editor of the Magazine—a post the 
duties of which he has fulfilled, not only to the entire satisfaction 
of every Member of the Society since the year 1857, but with a 
courtesy and affability which has endeared him to all of us, The 
Committee has already passed a resolution upon this subject, which 
will presently be put to this Meeting, and which will doubtless be 
carried with acclamation. The Rev. Edward Hungerford Goddard 
has been provisionally elected by the Committee (under Rule IX.) 
to fill Mr. Smith’s place, and a resolution appointing him will be 
submitted to this Meeting. 
“ As to finance, an account of receipts and disbursements was 
published with the Magazine issued this month. The apparent 
falling off in the amount of subscriptions received can be accounted 
for by the fact that in the year ending 1888 a considerable amount 
