4 Timehri. 
It is bound to maintain an Exchange Room, a Reading Room, a Museum and 
Model Room and a Library. It is also authorized to award premiums or grants 
of money for suitable objects connected with agriculture, manufactures or trade. 
How far it has carried out the intentions of its founders is a matter 
of colonial history, In the words of the pamphlet styled “A Historic 
Georgetown Institution”: “The name of the Society is boundup with 
the most honourable traditions and happiest associations of the colony. For 
sixty-six years its proceedings form a record of the public spirit, learning and 
culture of its leading citizens in planting, commercial, professional and official 
life.’ At some later date I may endeavour with the able assistance of Mr. J. 
Rodway (which has been already invoked for this paper) to review the work of 
nearly sixty-seven years. At the moment neither time nor space is available for 
the task. I will only mention that in its very first year the Society dealt in a 
practical spirit with many questions which have not ceased to be of burning 
interest in our own day, viz., railway development, mechanical tillage, cattle and 
sheep farming (especially as to the improvement of breeds), drainage, the 
problems of sugar chemistry, cultivation and manufacture, and the settlement 
of the lately emancipated black people upon the land. Those interested 
in the recent visit of the Banana Commission to Surinam will hardly be 
surprised to learn that the Committee noted ‘‘ with pain” the existence 
of a disease which rendered the profitable cultivation of the plantain doubt- 
ful. They also lent their Rooms (22nd January, 1843) for a meeting to 
advance the project of an East Coast railway. From railway construction they 
expected that “a new light would dawn upon this fertile land—its ample resources 
would be made apparent—its natural advantages would be turned to account— 
and it would be proved to the world at large that no bounds need be set to immi- 
gration. ” 
Among the local institutions which owe their origin to the Society are the 
Chamber of Commerce and the Agricultural Board, developments in a natural 
course of our Commercial and Agricultural Committees with which we are glad 
to say they maintain most beneficial and cordial relations. 
Among its present claims to consideration the Society can point to its library 
of over thirty thousand volumes ; to its Museum, unique as an exhibition of the 
fauna of South America and of everything relating to the native Indian life of 
the Guianas ; to its splendid entomological collection, the life-work of a succession 
of scientific curators ; to its rare prints and photographs including the publica- 
tions of the Arundel Society ; to its cool and lofty reading room supplied with 
all the best periodical literature and open to lady subscribers, to the families of 
members and to visitors to the colony. Finally it can point to the contributions 
of the past and present issues of Timehri to scientific research, to the value of the 
papers read at our frequent meetings and to the interest of the lantern lectures 
given from time to time in the Society's rooms. 
The Society has shared in the vicissitudes of the colony's fortunes but has 
survived to a period of more varied development with activities unimpaired. 
The reduction of the Government grant to the Museum by more than half in times 
of financial stress some years ago must cause some twinges of remorse to the 
ag icultural community in these days of insect pests for its acquiescence in that 
