17 
mention these few cases to show that after all death is not so un- 
kind in its action as many of us in our younger days have imagined. 
It was my intention to say something on Euthanasia, but I find 
that the subject is too long and touches many moral points which 
are scarcely fitted to be raised before this society, yet I think there 
are two or three fallacies in connection with death, which should 
be dispelled. Death, as as a rule, is not painful, for as we approach 
it our sensitiveness diminishes and actual death is generally 
painless. Again, the easing of pain, if it does not save life, 
certainly prolongs it; therefore, whilst we are causing euthanasia, 
we are not shortening life. 
When I began my paper, many difficulties presented themselves, 
and do so now, yet I trust the paper to you has not been altogether 
uninteresting nor uninstructive. I have tried to give a fair state- 
ment of the subject as far as my time and thought would permit, 
and those things which have been omitted, I hope will receive due 
attention in the subsequent discussion. 
The attendance was very good. There was a short discussion 
afterwards, in which the President and others took part. 
Fesruary 121n, 1884. 
The Annual Meeting was held at the Town Hall, the President 
in the chair. There was a very fair attendance. The Secretary 
explained the omission of a meeting in either December or January 
by the impossibility of getting anyone to read a paper. He then 
read the Statement of Accounts, which showed a balance of 19s. 1d. 
in favour of the Society. 
The President remarked on the fact that the Society was now 
entering on the sixteenth year of its existence, and he thought it 
was creditable to it that the number of members still kept up to 
about one hundred. He knew of many other societies which had 
started in the town and died out again, but there appeared no 
bond of brotherhood’ and kindly feeling so strong as the interest 
taken in natural history. .He tben called upon the Secretary to 
read the following paper on 
THE NAUTILUS AND THE AMMONITE. 
The relics of bygone worlds! Memorials of that which has been, 
and which can never be again! Reminders of a time long before 
man’s foot had trodden this earth, members of a creation over which 
he never had dominion! What curious imaginings pass through the 
