239 
Annual General Meeting, April 20tL, 1886. 
Professor Osborne Eeynolds, LL.D., F.R.S., in the Chair. 
Annual Report of the Council, April, 1886. 
The Treasurer, in submitting the annual balance sheets 
which accompany this Report, finds it necessary to point 
out to the members that the ordinary expenditure has again 
exceeded the ordinary receipts, the balance to the debit of 
the General Fund being £112 17s. 2d. on the 31st March, 
1886, as against £82 19s. 3d. at the corresponding period 
last year. This debit balance will be increased to about 
£176 by the payment of accounts now due, the principal of 
which is an item for £58 for the printing of the Society’s 
Memoirs. To partly meet this adverse balance, there is a 
list, rather larger than usual, of members’ subscriptions in 
arrear, say £52 ; also payments due, or falling due, of about 
£86 for the use of the Society’s rooms ; but these items do 
not cover the deficit. 
The Treasurer has also prepared for the information of 
the members a summarised account of the Receipts and 
Expenditure of the Society for the last 14 years, with the 
object of showing how the decline in membership, of the 
later years tabulated, has crippled the operations of the 
Society, and how necessary it is to make an earnest effort 
to considerably increase the number of members, in order 
that the finances of the Society may be placed on a sound 
basis, as urged in former Reports. 
In the first seven years of the period under review the 
members’ annual subscriptions averaged £350; in the 
Peoceedings— Lit. & Phil. Soc,— Yol. XXY.— No. 13. — Session 1885-6 
