to the standing income, and usual contributions, &c., and although no money was invested, yet there was a balance only of a few pounds at the end of the year. It further appears, that 500l. was paid for the paper, 370l. for engravings, and nearly 340l. for printing; and from those alarming facts, your Committee submit to your consideration, whether the expenditure might not be beneficially controlled by a standing Committee of Finance.
In obedience to the latter part of your resolution, your Committee now proceed to offer some further suggestions for your consideration. They conceive that it would afford a beneficial stimulus to individual exertion, if the Fellows who have received the medals of the Society, and those who have repeatedly enriched its Transactions, were distinguished by being collected into a separate and honourable list. It would also be found, perhaps, not less a future incentive than an act of retrospective justice, if the names of all those illustrious Fellows who have formerly obtained the medals, as well as of all those individuals who have been large benefactors to the Society, were recorded at the end of the list. It would be a satisfactory addition likewise to the annual list, if all those Fellows who have died, or had been admitted within the preceding year, were regularly noticed. And your Committee think, that these lists should always form part of the Transactions, and be stitched up with the last part of the volume.
It requires no argument to demonstrate that the wellbeing of the Society mainly depends on the activity and integrity of its Council; and as their selection is unquestionably of paramount importance, your Committee