[Saunders' News-Letter, Wednesday, May 3rd, 7848. 



GENERAL MEETING OF THE ROYAL 

 ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



A General Meeting of the Members of this Society was 

 held at the Gardens yesterday. 



Richard Carmichael, Esq., in the chair. 



The following Report was read and adopted : — 



REPORT 



of the Royal Zoological Society's Council for the year 

 ended 2nd May, 1848. 



"Your Council in presenting their Report for the past 

 year particularly desire to call your recollection to that 

 of their predecessors who, complaining of the feeble 

 support they had received and the consequent difficulties 

 they were involved in by those who induced them to 

 undertake the conducting of the Society, yet neglected to 

 pay their promised subscriptions, went on to recommend 

 a dissolution of the Society should this practice be per- 

 severed in, your Council regret to say that they have not 

 been well supported, and they have felt that they should 

 have been justified had they adopted the recommendation 

 they have referred to ; but when they reflected on the 

 great value of your Society as an Educational Institution, 

 the aid its garden and collection affords to Zoological 

 Science and the Fine Arts, but particularly to the still 

 more important service to the country of its affording a 

 place for the rational and quiet-minded recreation of the 

 people, they determined (though it involved serious 

 personal responsibilities) to endeavour to save your 

 Society (pronounced by competent authority to be the 

 most useful of the kind existing). Your Council therefore 

 adopted a system of the most rigid economy, and at the 

 same time suspended purchases, while they paid the 

 strictest attention to the preservation of the Society in 

 such a state as would fit it for extension in its various 

 departments whenever a more liberal spirit on the part 

 of the richer classes, and a returned prosperity of the 

 country should supply increased funds. The result has 

 been that the danger which threatened has been averted, 



