ADDRESS OF THE COUNCIL, 
they trust will prove satisfactory. The Society, 
however, will recollect that from various causes 
considerable difficulties have been encountered by 
some of these Committees in commencing their ope- 
rations, and that, therefore, the progress made during 
the first year has necessarily been slow. 
I. The Committee on Statistics, in consequence 
of the wish that their researches should be carried on 
in unison with similar researches contemplated in 
other parts of the kingdom, have not as yet com- 
menced their operations further than by opening a 
correspondence with the Society lately formed in 
London for the cultivation of this important branch 
of Science. In no department of investigation is 
unity of purpose more essential than in statistical 
enquiries, and the Committee have therefore de- 
termined to wait the result of the expected com- 
munication from the Secretary to the London 
Society, previous to commencing their own in- 
vestigations. When this shall have arrived, they 
propose to carry on their enquiries so as to afford 
every assistance to those which will be made on a 
grand scale throughout the kingdom, at the same 
time that it will be their endeavour to obtain such 
additional and local information as they may consider 
to be of use to the general purposes of the Natural 
History Society. But although as a body they have 
not as yet made much progress, the Council beg 
to draw the attention of the Meeting to the valuable 
information collected by Dr. Hastings, one of the 
Members of this Committee, upon this subject. This 
