PR E F A C £. 
viii 
volume may be regularly fent to the prefs, every 
fecond or third year. The feleflion of the papers 
has been made with as much impartiality, and 
as drift attention to their comparative merits, 
as could be expe&ed, in decifions of fo delicate 
a nature. Yet the committee are fenfible that 
a majority of-votes, delivered by ballot, is not 
an infallible ted of excellence, in literary or 
philofophical productions. This confideration^ 
they trud, will give them a reafonable claim 
to the candour of the reader, if there fhould 
be found occafion for its exercife : And they 
hope that Gentlemen, who have favoured the 
Society with valuable communications, will 
deem it no injudice or difparagement, that their 
Efiays have not been inferted, through the im¬ 
perfection of neceflary forms and regulations. 
They are preferved in the Archives of the Society, 
and may again come under review, when fub- 
jefts of a fimilar nature, to thofe on which they 
treat, are offered for difcudion. * 
No fydematic order has been obferved, in 
the difpofition of the mifcellaneous materials, 
which compofe thefe volumes j becaufe fuch an 
* Several Diflertations, by Dr. Percival, Mr. Henry, 
and others, enumerated in the printed Report of the Society, 
were publifhed by their refpedlive authors, long befoie 
thefe Memoirs were committed to the prefs. 
arrangement 
