540 REPOET OF THE COMMITTEE 



present are. Indeed, during the last year or two the roll of 

 members has somewhat decreased, the fresh accessions having 

 been insufficient to fill the vacancies in our ranks arising from 

 natural causes. As the annual subscriptions form a very im- 

 portant item in the income of the Society, this is a circumstance 

 much to be regretted, but it is one that might be easily altered 

 by a little effort on the part of the present members. 



The arrangements for the establishment of a College of Physi- 

 cal Science in Newcastle have been watched with extreme interest 

 by your Committee, and they have willingly acted with the 

 Executive of that institution whenever their co-operation seemed 

 to be desired. Your Committee cannot avoid expressing some 

 disappointment that no arrangements have as yet been made for 

 the recognition of Biological Science as a subject of study in the 

 College : they have, however, the assurance of the Executive 

 that this arises only from the present insufficiency of funds to 

 endow another professorship, and under these circumstances the 

 Committee have granted temporarily the free use of the Society's 

 collections for teaching purposes, to the professors and students 

 of the College, subject only to such restrictions as are found 

 necessary for their safe-keeping. Minutes of the Executive of 

 the College, copies of which have been sent to your Committee, 

 show the entire acceptance by that body of the views which have 

 been expressed by your Committee as to the relation which 

 should subsist between the two institutions. 



Since the last Anniversary Meeting, not only your Com- 

 mittee, but the whole Society, has had to deplore the decease of 

 its late junior Secretary, Mr. George Hodge. In him science 

 has lost a loving devotee, and his brother zoologists a genial, 

 unassuming, ever-friendly colleague. His researches were chiefly 

 connected with the results of dredging on the coast of Durham, 

 and they were interrupted some years prior to his death by his 

 removal from Seaham to Newcastle. There seemed every pro- 

 spect of a renewal of his interesting labours on his return to 

 Seaham in 1869, but his career was cut short by a rapily fatal 

 illness. It was during his brief residence in Newcastle that he 

 became more actively interested in the working of our Society, 



