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 THE TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COUNCIL.

22nd January, 1902.

The Council have the honour to lay before the Society their twenty-fourth Annual Report.

The number of members now on the roll is 393. While it is much to be regretted that there should be any diminution, however small, in the number of members, upon which the Society has to rely to fulfil its main function as a publish- ing Society, this is not surprising; for the present is not a favourable time for the expansion of learned societies, the calls upon the public purse during the past two years having been so abnormally heavy, and being likely to be still further increased. The Council would impress upon every mem- ber the necessity of enlisting recruits if the work of the Society is to be kept up to the level of past years.

During the past year the deaths of members of the Society have been beyond the average.

In the death of Miss Grove the Council have lost one of their most active and energetic members. The formation of the Lecture Committee was entirely due to her initiative, and she was ever to the fore in devising means for spread- ing a knowledge of the Society and its work in quarters where but for the existence of the Committee that knowledge would have been little likely to penetrate. Among other losses by death the Council have to record those of Sir Walter Besant, Mr. J. L. Andre, and Mr. H. D. Skrine, all old members of the Society.

The resignations have been somewhat more than in previous years, and there has been also a slight falling off in the number of new members.

The following meetings, at which papers were read before the Society, were held in the course of the year 1901, viz. : —