In taking the Chair, to which, by your kindness, I have been appointed, it may not be an inappropriate introduction to its duties if, in congratulating you on the prosperous state of the Society, I should refer to some facts in its history, not generally known, which have materially contributed to its prosperity and progress.

In the closing years of the last and in the first decade of the present century, the Society was in a very languid condition. In each of the years 1799, 1802, 1803, 1808, and 1809, only one of the papers read at its meetings was published in the Transactions; and in 1801 and 1806, not a single paper read in these years was published.