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persons in the community as recognize in these Institutions 
a powerful means of educational improvement, to the neces- 
sity which must shortly arise for a building exclusively and 
permanently devoted to the purpose, and susceptible of 
expansion and improvement with the growing wants of an 
intelligent, energetic, and rapidly increasing population. 
The Council consider that the first step should be to 
apply to the Crown for a grant of a suitable piece of 
Jand as a site, upon which, as a basis, then to proceed in 
raising, by public subscription or otherwise, a sum of money 
adequate to the speedy erection of so much of the plan ~ 
of an extended edifice as the immediate and not very remote 
exigencies of the case may demand. 
Arrangements made in 1851 with the Royal Exchange 
Association, in order to have accommodation provided for 
the Museum and Meetings of the Society in the buildings 
proposed to have been erected by them, were alluded to in 
the last Annual Report as not likely to be realized, and it 
was recommended that some other plan should be devised 
for meeting the emergency. The plan which has been 
adopted, that of renting a Hall, while it scarcely answers 
well the present purpose, possesses no character of perma- 
nency, and is neither suitable to the wants of the commu- 
nity, nor becoming the ample means with which Providence 
has blessed this fair country. 
The Museum is now open on Mondays, Tuesdays, 
Fridays, and on Saturdays from 3 to 5 oclock during 
summer, and from 2 to 4 o’clock during the four winter 
‘months of May, June, July and August; and so soon 
as ever the funds of the Society will permit of the 
employment of a regular Curator, the Council will feel a 
pleasure in having the doors freely thrown open to the 
public. In the meantime, every facility will be afforded to 
