TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING.^ 



(HELD AT THE HOUSE OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS.) 



The President, 



Sir George Gabriel Stokes, Bart., LL.D., Sc.D., F.R.S., 



IN THE Chair. 



Captain Francis Petrie, F.G.S., &c., Hon. Sec, read the following 

 Eeport : — 



Progress of the Institute. 



In presenting the Twenty-Seventh Annual Report tlie Council 

 is glad to be able to record the continued progress of the 

 Institute. This progress, the Council has always felt, 

 rested in no small degree with the Members and Associates 

 themselves ; and this feeling has certainly become very 

 general in the Institute, and has contributed to the firmness 

 of that support which all have given, and which has tended 

 not only to improve the Institute's strength and stability, 

 but to increase public confidence in it. During the past 

 year several Members and Associates have actively aided by 

 proposing friends for election, also nearly a score of old 

 Members, who had retired in the early years of the Institute, 

 have rejoined. 



2. Among the Institute's Members there has always been 

 an increasing proportion who have taken their part in the 

 investigation of Philosophical and Scientific questions, and of 

 late years the Council has been much gratified to note that 

 the number of others in the high walks of Science who have 

 joined in forwarding the Institute's work (without actually 

 becoming Members) is also largely on the increase. Such 

 outside support has tended to enhance the value of its 

 investigations in regard to Philosophical and Scientific 

 questions generally, and especially in respect to theories 

 which have been advanced in opposition to Rehgious belief. 

 What has been accomplished has been of much value in the 



* Among those from whom communications were received expressing 

 regret at not being able to be present were the Dukes of Argyll, Fife 

 and "Westminster, Lord Halsbury (Lord High Chancellor), Lord Kelvin, 

 the President of the Eoyal Society, and others. 



^*^ The issue of the proceedings on this occasion has been delayed. 



