Abstract of Annual Report.

Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 24, 1891, Page 707

Abstract of Annual Report. Thirteen new members have been elected during the year. Twenty-three names have been withdrawn, leaving the total number on the roll at the present time 195. The total revenue of the General Account has been £736 10s. 7d. The invested funds of the Costley bequest have yielded £374 15s., and £154 7s. has been derived from the members' subscriptions. The rents and profits transferred from the Museum Endowment Account amount to £168 15s. 4d. The total expenditure has been £1,566 13s. 9d. Of this sum, £789 12s. has been expended on the addition to the Museum buildings now being erected, the balance of £777 1s. 9d. representing the ordinary expenditure incurred in the maintenance of the Museum and Institute. The invested funds of the Institute amount to £11,752 9s. 10d.

Eight meetings have been held during the year, at which twenty-one papers on various scientific and literary subjects were read. Arrangements were made early in the year for the erection of an addition to the Museum, intended to contain the ethnological specimens. The building is well advanced, and will probably be completed in a few months' time. As the whole of the collections will be rearranged when it is finished, few changes of importance have been made in the Museum during the past year. The chief additions have been some valuable exchanges of mammals, birds, and minerals received from the National Museum, Washington, and some fine mammals from the Imperial Museum of Natural History at Florence. The valuable collection of Maori ethnological specimens deposited in the Museum by Captain Gilbert Mair, and alluded to in the last report, has been fully arranged and labelled, and has attracted much attention. Reference was made to the crowded state of the library, which now contains over five thousand volumes, and a recommendation was made that additional accommodation should be provided at an early date.