6 Annual Meeting. 



sent to the Belfast Museum will be gratefully received and 

 thankfully acknowledged." 



Mr. Brown, Hon. treasurer, in presenting his statement, 

 said : — 



" The subscription list is now higher than ever it has been 

 during the existence of the Society — amounting as it does to 

 £1^9. The income altogether was £332, which showed that 

 we have good reason to be satisfied with the progress of the 

 Society. The expenditure, no doubt, has correspondingly in- 

 creased. One item was the reporting of the discussions This 

 did not absorb much money, however, and it is of great 

 advantage, and gives a colouring to the meetings." 



Mr. R. L. Patterson, in moving the adoption of the Report, 

 first of all handed to the chairman scrip for ^400 worth of 

 Shares in the York Street Flax Spinning Company. That re- 

 presented merely a change of investment — namely, from a 4 per 

 cent, without security to one with security at 4^ per cent. He 

 congratulated the Society on being in such a healthy and pros- 

 perous condition — more prosperous than it had ever been 

 within his recollection. The Society was founded in June, 1 821, 

 so that it was now in the seventy- first year of its existence. The 

 Museum was established in 183 1, which left them sixty years in 

 occupation of the building, the condition of which at present 

 showed that it had been carried out in a most substantial 

 manner. In 183 1 the membership was 91, with the population 

 of the city 48,000. The membership was now 254, with the 

 population increased to 270,000. If, therefore, the membership 

 had increased with the population, it should now have been 

 upwards of 500. Among the members there were only 58 

 annual subscribers — a number which he thought much too 

 small. A great many of the young men of Belfast might reap 

 considerable advantage by joining the Society, which they could 

 do at the small cost of one guinea per annum. The Museum 



