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HISTORY OF OUR SOCIETY. 201 
and a curator to take proper care of them, the estab- 
lishment of a Museum is, I believe, best left to private 
individuals, and our late President’s delightful museum 
is, I think, an ample proof of my contention, especially 
when compared with our own feeble store-room of 
specimens. 
No doubt the Library is a much more useful adjunct, 
but in these days of Free Reference Libraries, I doubt 
if there is the same necessity for it that there used to be. 
A Society’s Library should, of course, be a_ special 
one, restricted almost to the standard text books and 
books of reference to the various sciences, together 
with the usual scientific periodicals, year books, and 
transactions. 
4th.—The purely social side, that is to say the bringing 
together of people of like interests, more especially 
those who feel that their brains are worthy of more 
use than simply money making and “getting on”; in 
fact, that there isa ‘getting on” in intelligence and a 
storing up of brain power, which is of somewhat greater 
value. Our meetings and excursions attempt this and 
I believe have been fairly successful, but I hope in 
the future that success may be even more marked, and 
that short papers and long discussions, which to my 
mind indicate the true vitality of a society, may be 
more numerous. It appears to me that at the present 
time this is the special direction in which we must look 
for advance. _I should feel somewhat inclined to pro- 
pose reducing the number of evenings devoted to long 
papers, and replacing say two such evenings a season 
by two evenings devoted to discussions on scientific 
subjects of immediate special interest and the asking ot 
questions that members may wish to have information 
upon, and surely a society, numbering so many mem- 
bers with letters indicating degrees or membership of 
