1849.] Financial Report. 861 



to which this, like every other Society of similar constitution, has 

 hitherto been, and is likely to continue subject. 



The Council regret that some of the reductions which they recom- 

 mend will press heavily upon individual officers of the Society ; a 

 consequence which the Council would willingly have avoided, had they 

 seen any other mode of extricating the Society from its difficulties. 



In proposing such reductions they desire to be understood as 

 expressing, not any opinion that the officers who will be affected are 

 now too highly remunerated with reference to their attainments, bat a 

 deliberate conviction that the affairs of the Society must henceforth be 

 conducted upon a more economical scale, and that they may be effi- 

 ciently conducted notwithstanding the reductions proposed. 



The following are the principal reductions recommended by the 

 Council. 



1st. They recommend that the European Accountant at present 

 employed by the Secretaries be hereafter dispensed with. This will 

 effect a saving of Rs. 60 per mensem. The Council are by no means 

 insensible to the importance of providing for the due keeping and 

 audit of the Society's accounts. But the native writer attached to 

 the Secretary's office ought to be, and the Council believe is, fully 

 competent to keep the accounts ; and the Council believe that a far 

 more effectual and satisfactory system of audit than any which has 

 yet been provided, would be found in the appointment by the Society 

 of three or more of its members to act as a Finance Committee, The 

 Council think that the duties of such a Committee need not be 

 restricted to the mere auditing of the Secretaries' accounts, but that in 

 every case in which the Society is called upon to make a vote of money, 

 it might usefully refer to the Committee to report whether, having 

 regard to the then state of the Society's finances, such an expenditure 

 would be safe or prudent. This would in no degree affect the undoubted 

 privilege of the Society at large to determine to what objects its money 

 should be applied, whilst it would afford a safeguard against hasty 

 and improvident votes by which the resources of the Society are liable 

 to be anticipated. A further, though slight reduction is proposed in 

 the Secretaries' office by the removal, of one of the peons at present 

 employed there. 



2nd. The Zoological department as at present constituted, is a 



