elsewhere compelled him to resign this personal charge of them, 
the former plan of Curators for different departments was 
resumed. The office of Keeper was, however, revived in 1844, 
and has been successively filled by Mr. Charlesworth and 
Mr. Dallas; the Curators making annual reports of the state 
and progress of their respective departments. 
A most important event in the history of our Society was 
the meeting of the British Association, in this its birthplace, in 
September, 1844. An invitation for 1843 had been addressed 
to that body when they met at Manchester in 1842; hut the 
modest pleading of Mr. Wellbeloved, who presented and 
supported the invitation, was overborne by the eloquence of 
Dr. Cooke Taylor, who presented a similar invitation from 
Cork. And after a debate in which Corh and Yorh were 
bandied backward and forward in ludicrous confusion, Cork 
carried the day. A^ork had no reason to regret the delay, 
which gave a longer time for preparation, while the meeting 
at Cork was seriously injured by the agitation for Bepeal. 
Before the next year the Council had received the sum of 
£9,000, from the munificent bequest of Dr. Beckwith, 
wdiich enabled them to extend the grounds, and lay them 
out in their enlarged state, under the direction of an 
accomplished landscape gardener. Sir John Nasmyth; to 
repair, beautify, and warm the Museum, to fit up the 
upper floor of the Hospitium, to add, by a grant from the 
Corporation, the Hospital of St. Leonard to the antiquarian 
attractions of their grounds, and to re-purchase from the 
Swimming Bath Company the ground wffiich had been leased 
to them in less prosperous times. In accordance with the 
expressed wish of Dr. Beckwith, the first use to which his 
bequest was applied was the erection of a house for the Sub- 
Curator, instead of the damp, unwholesome dwelling to which 
the exigencies of the Society had previously confined him. 
Looking not only to the immediate results of his legacy in 
freeing us from an embarrassing debt, but to the security 
which it has given us against its recurrence in the ordinary 
course of things, and the large additions which it has enabled 
us to make to the attractions offered to the public, it is hardly 
