of Edinburgh, Session 1870 - 71 . 
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ls£. The work done by us as a Society, during the past year. 
2d. The means we possess, of doing our work. 
3 d. Suggestions for rendering our Society more efficient. 
4 tli. The usefulness of Societies like ours. 
5th. The best way of encouraging and assisting such Societies. 
I. Work of tlie Society during the past Year. 
The ordinary business of the Society, as we all know, is done 
during the winter, at evening meetings, when papers are read. 
These are abstracted into our printed Proceedings, and the most 
valuable inserted verbatim in our Transactions. 
The number of our meetings last winter was 13, being on an 
average two, each month. The number of papers read at these 
meetings, was 43. The authors of these, were 33 persons. 
Of the 43 papers, 5 were literary ; the other 38 papers, on matters 
of physical science. 
In the previous year, the -total number of papers had been 44, 
all on physical subjects. 
The following epitome shows the number of the papers under 
each branch of science : — 
Mathematical papers, . . . .11 
Chemical „ .... 7 
Mechanical or Natural Philosophy papers, . 6 
Medical .... „ .4 
Geological .... „ .3 
Zoological .... „ .3 
Geographical 2 
Botanical . . . . „ . 1 
Meteorological . . . „ . 1 
In a few instances, and I regret they were so few, discussion 
occurred on the part of the Fellows present, after the papers were 
read or described. 
I have said that all these papers appear in an abstracted form 
in our printed Proceedings. Last year’s printed Proceedings 
extend to 209 octavo pages. Those of the year before, contained 
200 pages. 
Of the 43 papers presented last winter, 11 were selected as worth 
