immense industrial expansion which science has rendered possible. In its 

 LABORATORY have been worked out many of the fundamental ideas upon 

 which is reared the vast fabric of our chemical industries. Within its walls 

 Faraday achieved the epoch-making discoveries which are the basis of the 

 manifold applications of electricity that enrich the modern world. The 

 eminent men who have successively directed its continuous research have 

 collectively made contributions of incalculable value to the wealth and 

 comfort which the community enjoy to-day. 



These results have been attained with very exiguous resources. The 

 ROYAL INSTITUTION has never been wealthy, and has sometimes known very 

 straitened circumstances. It has never enjoyed either the opulence that 

 comes from rich endowments or the assured ease that may be conferred by 

 r the assistance of the State. Its income has always depended, as it depends 

 to-day, upon the subscriptions of its Members, and therefore upon the 

 number of persons who recognise the advantages of Membership, or the 

 importance of maintaining its beneficent activities. For its ability to 

 undertake specially extensive and important researches it has been indebted 

 to the supplementary contributions of Members and others capable of 

 estimating the value of the new knowledge which success would bring to 

 the service of man. 



Those who can realise the value to the country of fruitful scientific 

 work, carried on in honourable independence, have an easy means of 

 showing their appreciation by enrolling themselves among the Members of 

 the Royal Institution. While thus contributing to secure the continuance 

 of labours rich in scientific and practical benefaction to the community, 

 they will not fail to derive immediate personal advantage. They will find 

 in the building in Albemarle Street spacious rooms, well lighted and com- 

 fortably furnished, in which an unusually copious supply of current literature 

 and periodicals is at their disposal. They will find a LIBRARY of some 

 60,000 volumes, principally scientific, but containing a large proportion of 

 works of general interest, many of them rare and not easily accessible. 

 They will find almost every book of reference that can be named, and every 

 needful facility for study or correspondence. 



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