Fourth Annual Report

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 5, 1872, Unnumbered Page

Fourth Annual Report by the Governors of the New Zealand Institute.. Meetings of the Board of Governors were held during the past year on the 24th August, 12th September, 1st November, 1871; and 28th February and 11th April, 1872. The following gentlemen were re-nominated to be Governors:—W. T. L. Travers, F.L.S., and Charles Knight, F.R.C.S.; and a vacancy occasioned by the retirement of J. E. Fitzgerald, C.M.G., has not yet been filled up. The Governors elected by the affiliated Societies for the present year are:—His Honor William Rolleston, the Hon. W. B. D. Mantell, His Honor Mr. Justice Chapman. On the 11th April, 1872, Alfred Ludlam, Esq., resigned the honorary Treasurership, and the Hon. W. B. Mantell, M.L.C., accepted the office. In accordance with the provisions of Statute IV., three foreign members were elected; namely, J. E. Gray, Ph.D., F.R.S., Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S., William Lauder Lindsay, M.D., F.R.S.E. The Institute now includes five affiliated Societies; the total number of members being 577, showing an increase of 24 on last year. Members. Wellington Philosophical Society 132 Auckland Institute 157 Philosophical Institute of Canterbury 81 Otago Institute 136 Nelson Association 71 The appended statement of accounts shows the manner in which the endowment of the Institute has been applied. The fourth volume of the Transactions and Proceedings was issued in May last. It consists of 472 pages, and contains sixty-four original communications by forty-five authors, illustrated by nineteen lithographed plates. Of these papers, nineteen are on zoology, twelve on botany, nine on chemistry, three on geology, and nineteen on miscellaneous subjects. The Board of Governors having decided that, in publication, preference is to be given to those papers which add to the knowledge of observed facts relative to New Zealand, several papers of a general character have been held back, or only published in an abridged form.

The supply of volumes now in store is as follows:—Of Volume I., none; Volume II., 58; Volume III., 53; Volume IV., 74 copies. The report of the Manager on the condition of the Museum and other establishments placed under his direction, is appended. It shows that valuable additions have been made to the collections in the Museum during the past year, but that the want of sufficient exhibiting space has rendered it necessary to remove a large portion of those additions from exhibition to the public. On this point the Governors feel it to be their duty to point out that the collections in the Museum cannot be properly exhibited, so that the public may derive full advantage from them, without the completion of the building as originally designed. The Governors also call attention to the expediency of increasing the staff of the Colonial Museum, especially as regards the preparation of articles of Natural History, so that collections of such objects may be distributed to the various Educational Institutions of the Colony in a form calculated to aid in the work of instruction in Natural History. G. F. Bowen, President. Wellington, 19th September, 1872.