lxxxii 
FIFTY-THIRD ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 
OF THE 
ROYAL INSTITUTION OF CORNWALL, 
Held on Tuesday, November 14th, 1871. 
This Meeting was held in the Institution Lecture-Room, and 
there were present: Mr. W. J. Henwood, F.R.S., President ; Mr. 
J. St. Aubyn, M.P., Dr. Barham, Mr. W. Copeland Borlase, Rev. 
J. R. Cornish, Mr. J. H. Collins, F.G.S., Mr. Henderson, C.E., 
Dr. Jago, F.R.S., Mr. H. Spry Leverton, Mr. W. J. Rawlings, 
Mr. Tweedy, Mr. W. Tweedy, Mr. Whitley, and Mr. D. G. 
Whitley. 
The PRESIDENT, in opening the meeting, said that for some 
considerable time after this Institution was founded, one general 
meeting in the year sufficed ; as well for the transaction of ordinary 
business as for reading the communications which had been pre- 
sented. But at last these became so few that they amounted to 
no more than four pages and a half for one entire twelvemonth 
(1854). At length, however, it was considered that Spring would 
be a much more agreeable season than Winter, for all who 
favoured the meetings with their presence, and especially for 
those from a distance. In 1860, therefore, the first Spring Meeting 
was held. The experiment was perfectly successful, and, to the 
present time, their prosperity had regularly and uninterruptedly 
advanced. The communications with which they were favoured 
began immediately to increase, and—without at all declining in 
quality or in interest—they had gone on increasing. In 1863 it 
was deemed advisable to alter their mode of publication; and he 
believed that the three volumes of the Journal of the Royal Insti- 
tution of Cornwall, since issued, would bear favourable comparison 
with the publications of any other Society in the West of England. 
For the commencement of a fourth volume there was already a 
supply of excellent materials, so ample that the Council had been 
compelled, with courteous permission from the authors, to reserve 
some of them to future opportunity. 
