109 
Special General Meeting, March 23rd, 1875. 
EdwaKD Schunck, Ph.D,, F.RS., &c., President, in the 
Chair. 
The President said : — The subject which the meeting 
will have to consider this evening is one of considerable 
importance. We have met to discuss and come to a decision 
on a scheme first proposed by the Council and generally 
approved of by the Society at its annual meeting in April, 
1873, a scheme for the incorporation of the Society under 
the provisions of the Companies Acts 1862 and 18675 ^^d 
the adoption of a new code of laws which this scheme if 
carried out will render necessary. This Society, as you are 
aware, has hitherto occupied the position simply of a 
private association for the promotion of Literature and 
Science, having been guided by laws or rules, which have 
frequently been altered and revised so as to adapt them to 
altered circumstances. The Laws and Kegulations govern- 
ing the Society at the period of its establishment will be 
found in print at the commencement of the first volume of 
the Society’s Memoirs, published in 1785. The two chief 
objects of the Society at that period (when the number of 
members was limited to fifty) seem to have been the reading 
of papers on various subjects at its meetings, and the subse- 
quent publication of such of them as the “ Committee of 
Papers ” should approve of in its Memoirs, and the “ Laws ” 
refer principally to these objects. The secondary objects 
which the Society had in view, such as the formation of a 
library, the award of medals to persons of merit, &c., were 
set forth in the so-called “ Regulations.” These Laws (the 
Regulations having in 1790 been incorporated with them) 
Proceedings— Lit. & Phil. Soc. — Yol. XIY. — No. 10. — Session 1874-75, 
