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may be the interest of our Meetings,—no matter how far the study of 
Science, Literature, or Antiquities, may be aided by our Library and our 
Museum,—it is by our published works that we shall be judged, and 
by which we must stand or fall. Ihave only to add, that your 
Council are duly impressed with this feeling; and that your Officers are 
at present engaged in the consideration of some measures, which 
promise to give not only a speedy, but also an increased publicity to 
our Proceedings. 
“ Another instrument of progress, to whose efficacy Iwill advert, 
and which this Academy may, I think, effectively wield, is the directing 
power which it may reasonably assume, in pointing out to its Members 
problems of local interest remaining to be solved, and encouraging 
them to the task by the proposal of Honorary Rewards. The practice of 
proposing subjects for investigation, and of honouring them by Prizes, 
has existed, you must be aware, from the very origin of the Academy ; 
and it has tended to elicit researches of considerable interest and value. 
Some years since, indeed, it was generally felt that the system had failed ; 
and that opinion (in which at the time I shared) led to an alteration 
in the system of honorary rewards, with which you are of course 
acquainted. It may be doubted, however, whether this failure was the 
necessary result of the system itself, and not rather of the nature of 
some of the topics selected and proposed. It must be manifest, I think, 
that no encouragement which such a Society as this can bestow, will be 
likely to stimulate a man of genius to the investigation of an. abstruse 
question, to which he feels no predisposing movement,—that no Reward 
can usurp the place of Inspiration itself. But there are problems of a 
different stamp, whose solutions may be expected as the certain result 
of well-directed labour; to such problems as these, especially when their 
local character invests them with additional interest, and in some 
degree prepares men’s minds for the research,—to such problems the 
recommendation of a learned Society may, with full assurance of the 
result, direct the attention of its Members. We know how much our 
knowledge of the Antiquities of this country has benefited by the pro- 
posal of such questions. Allow me to suggest one or two of a similar 
character connected with Physical science, as examples of what may 
be done in other departments. 
