HISTORY OF OUR SOCIETY. 199 
formation of the Society until his recent departure from the 
town was our Excursion Secretary, and who by his energy 
conduced greatly to the success of the excursions. 
I must finally refer to the Volumes of Transactions pub- 
lished by the Society. During the first five or six years 
the Annual Reports included papers recommended to be 
printed by vote of the members. This was abandoned 
about 1881, when the condition of the Society’s funds shewed 
it to be absolutely necessary. Several papers worthy of 
publication were consequently lost, but an improvement in 
its finances enabled the Society in 1889 to issue a Volume 
of Transactions, which I feel satisfied cannot be surpassed 
for intrinsic worth by any similar Society’s production in 
the kingdom. The second volume might well have been 
deferred until more papers of value had been accumulated, 
for, good as the papers are, they are few in number, and, 
as a volume, it does not compare with its predecessor. 
Parts i and ii of Volume III are published and contain 
papers of great interest. 
I cannot think that anyone, considering the epitome of 
work done, can come to any other conclusion than that this 
Society has been, and is, a successful one; we have had ups 
and downs, and more than once your Executive have felt 
that the interest of the few enthusiasts was not shared by 
the mass of the members, and that it was very doubtful if 
a Society depending almost entirely on the energy and 
enthusiasm of a small number of workers was successful 
enough to be continued; members like our present and late 
Secretary, who have persistently continued the work of 
regular observations, meteorological, entomological, and botan- 
ical, are, I believe, the mainstay of a Society like this, and 
it is this slow accumulation of more especially local scien- 
tific facts which should be one of the most valuable features 
of our work, although I am afraid it cannot appeal very 
strongly to the mass of our members. 
