Xll 
PREFACE. 
views tending to scepticism are becoming only too common. 
The welcome accorded to the Transactions ” in America is 
also worthy of note. 
The progress of the Society, due in no small degree to the 
great interest taken in its welfare by those who become its 
supporters, has been such as to encourage the hope that it 
may speedily be adequately powerful to undertake all it was 
designed to accomplish ; but that this hope may be realized, it 
is not the less necessary that those efforts which have placed 
it in its present position should not be relaxed. The average 
increase of Members and Associates dui’ing the past five years 
has been upwards of one hundred annually, and the actual 
number has slightly increased each year. 
Such progress has greatly contributed towards making the 
objects of the Society more widely known, and its work more 
telling. 
F. PETRIE, 
lion. Sec. and Editor. 
December 31 , 1875 . 
I 
