4 
OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY. 
same honourable feelings will crown its undertaking with 
entire success. 
Among the methods by which the Society proposes to 
accomplish its general design,—It hopes to contribute to 
the diffusion of knowledge, by giving encouragement to 
Public Lectures ; to forward the progress of investigation, 
by providing Apparatus for the use of the experimentalist 
and observer; and to facilitate the mutual communication of 
philosophical ideas, by holding Meetings, at which 
papers may be read, and oral information interchanged. 
Another of the Society’s objects has been the establishment 
of a Library, by means of which, persons of scientific 
pursuits, in different parts of the County, may be enabled to 
consult Books on the subjects of their respective studies, which 
it might not be convenient for them individually to purchase ; 
and, for that purpose, a Collection is making by degrees, of 
the Transactions of Philosophical Societies, and other works 
on Arts, Antiquities, Natural History, and the various 
branches of Science; a collection which, being necessarily 
of an expensive kind, cannot be expected to be of 
rapid growth, unless it should receive, from the liberality of 
individual members, an augmentation beyond what the 
Society’s limited revenue can afford. 
To supply a kind of information which books cannot 
adequately convey, the Society lias also founded a Museum, 
where collections are accumulating of those objects of philo¬ 
sophical enquiry, which, to be understood, require to be 
