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may be the interest of our Meetings, — no matter how far the study of 

 Science, Literature, or Antiquities, may be aided by our Library and our 

 Museum, — it is by our published works that we shall be judged, and 

 by which we must stand or fall. I have only to add, that your 

 Council are duly impressed with this feeling ; and that your Officers are 

 at present engaged in the consideration of some measures, which 

 promise to give not only a speedy, but also an increased publicity to 

 our Proceedings. 



"Another instrument of progress, to whose efficacy I will advert, 

 and which this Academy may, I think, effectively wield, is the directing 

 power which it may reasonably assume, in pointing out to its Members 

 problems of local interest remaining to be solved, and encouraging 

 them to the task by the proposal of Honorary Rewards. The practice of 

 proposing subjects for investigation, and of honouring them by Prizes, 

 has existed, you must be aware, from the very origin of the Academy ; 

 and it has tended to elicit researches of considerable interest and value. 

 Some years since, indeed, it was generally felt that the system had failed; 

 and that opinion (in which at the time I shared) led to an alteration 

 in the system of honorary rewards, with which you are of course 

 acquainted. It may be doubted, however, whether this failure was the 

 necessary result of the system itself, and not rather of the nature of 

 some of the topics selected and proposed. It must be manifest, I think, 

 that no encouragement which such a Society as this can bestow, will be 

 likely to stimulate a man of genius to the investigation of an abstruse 

 question, to which he feels no predisposing movement, — that no Reward 

 can usurp the place of Inspiration itself. But there are problems of a 

 different stamp, whose solutions may be expected as the certain result 

 of well-directed labour ; to such problems as these, especially when their 

 local character invests them with additional interest, and in some 

 degree prepares men's minds for the research, — to such problems the 

 recommendation of a learned Society may, with full assurance of the 

 result, direct the attention of its Members. We know how much our 

 knowledge of the Antiquities of this country has benefited by the pro- 

 posal of such questions. Allow me to suggest one or two of a similar 

 character connected with Physical science, as examples of what may 

 be done in other departments. 



