ANNUAL MEETING. 
772 
expected the first-class men of the profession will expend their time in addressing empty 
benches. I will not refer now to the proposed regulations for storing poisons ; it will 
be my duty specially to bring this matter before you by-and-by; and in asking you to 
adopt the Annual Report of the Council, I want it to be clearly understood that the 
meeting will not commit themselves in any way to these regulations. The clause in 
the Report has been carefully worded, so that it need not commit the meeting, either 
one way or the other. I will therefore defer, and ask gentlemen, in speaking to the 
Report, to defer any observations on that point until it is brought officially before the 
meeting. I cannot close my remarks without referring to one subject, which could not 
be referred to in the Report, but on which I venture to express my own personal feeling, 
and, I think, I shall carry the hearty sympathy of the meeting with me when I say with 
how great grief I notice that the future Council, however otherwise constituted, will 
lack the experienced wisdom of so many good and staunch friends of the cause of phar¬ 
macy. Of Messrs.. Ince and Carteighe I have already spoken: they have proved 
most valuable councillors, and leave the Board that they may be enabled to devote their 
high talents in another sphere of the Society’s work—in a sphere where their special 
qualities can perhaps more effectively render good service to the Society; but to see 
the other good names conspicuous by their absence from the list of candidates for 
re-election is most painful. It is at all times painful to see old and tried friends drop¬ 
ping out of the ranks, but especially so such men as Randall, Orridge, Morson, and 
Squire, who have all for years displayed a devotion to the welfare of the Society, 
known best to those who have worked, shoulder to shoulder, with them. But of the 
last two how shall I speak? Both have held office, the one with slight intermission, 
the other without any, since the foundation of the Society, and both have been most 
intimately associated with every movement of the Society, and both have most emi¬ 
nently assisted every progressive movement onwards. In conclusion, I beg to move 
“ That the Report of the Council, now read, be received and adopted, and published 
in the Society’s Journal and Transactions.” 
Mr. Carteighe seconded the motion. 
Mr. Jameson (Reading) said there was one thing which it would be well to consider, 
and that was, whether the examination, to which allusion had been made, for the rising 
generation, those who had been for the last three years in the business, was not a little 
too stringent. He must say that in the town he represented, it had driven something like 
a dozen young men out of the business, and the great difficulty was, that it acted retro¬ 
spectively, these persons not having entered upon the business with the knowledge that 
they would have to pass this severe examination; he would therefore suggest that the 
Modified examination should be a little extended to those who had been three years in 
the business, not drawing the line at twenty-one years of age, but to all who had been 
that time engaged in it, whether assistants, apprentices or not, so that all the hopes with 
which they had entered upon an employment for life should not be frustrated. He had 
had many cases of this kind brought before him, and in the last number of the Phar¬ 
maceutical Journal he noticed a letter to the same effect, very properly worded, and he 
hoped that this matter would receive the consideration of the Council. The last preli¬ 
minary examination was a very severe one ; in fact, he should have been sorry to have 
had to pass it in his time, and was doubtful whether he could have done so. He felt, 
therefore, very much that, as a member of the Society, he was pressing rather hardly 
upon some of these young men. 
Mr. Wilkinson (Manchester) said he could go a great deal with what had been said 
by the last speaker. He did not think the examiners considered the circumstances in 
which the young men were placed who came before them; many of them were from nine¬ 
teen to twenty-two and twenty-three years of age, who had entered upon the business six 
or seven years ago, long before any examination at all was calculated upon, and some of 
them had received, perhaps, a very imperfect education, whilst from the circumstances 
iu which they were now placed, they had very little, or scarcely any opportunity of 
improving their knowledge of Latin, English Grammar, composition, and arithmetic. 
Many a young man of this class would begin at seven o’clock in the morning by sweep¬ 
ing out the shop, then he would go on to cleaning palette-knives, mixing paint, making 
horse-balls, preparing cow-drinks, powdering saltpetre, and now and then he might 
have four or five bottles of blacking to fill up, seal, and label. This would go on until 
nine o’clock at night, when the shop was closed, and, after that, if he sat down to 
