President: Dr. C. Crawford. Secretary: Mrs. J. Winkley.

President's Report for Year ended December 31, 1957

Over the previous few years, the Society has shown relatively little activity, there being few meetings and no activity outside the meetings. The main work of the Society went on in the various sub-sections—the sections of History, Meteorology and Ornithology, all of which met regularly and showed great interest in their specialised fields. The Historical Section has probably done more practical work than the others, with its original work on the early history of Hawke's Bay.

One result of the inactivity of the parent Society was that, with the lessening of interest, attendance at meetings became small and our membership dropped.

This year, however, the Society has been more active again. There have been six meetings which I have listed in the Summary and, with the generally high standard of speakers, meetings have been well attended. I have the impression that they have been consistently larger than in other recent years.

One paradoxical result of this activity is reflected in the Balance Sheet. You will see that our expenses have gone up considerably, while our income has not increased correspondingly. This added expense is accounted for by greatly increased advertising. Merely notifying members of meetings is a considerable expense, and the increase in meetings has meant an increase in circulars. As well as this, all public meetings have been well advertised in the local newspapers and, as you know, newspaper advertising is an expensive business. However, this has been eminently justified by the good attendance at meetings and, as one result, there has been a trickle of new members with each public meeting.

I shall refer you to my summary for the statistics of membership, and the only point I would draw your attention to is the deaths of two of our old members, Mr. Sainsbury and Mr. Phillips. Mr. Sainsbury, as you know, has been a Fellow of the Royal Society for several years. The secretary has written to Mrs. Sainsbury and Mrs. Phillips expressing our sympathy with them.

To return to the question of the increased expenditure of the Society last year, there is a point which I shall only mention at present, as it will not be my concern as retiring President. If we are to continue to maintain an active Society, these advertising expenses will recur and, unless we can increase our membership a lot, we shall soon be in the red Add to this the fact that the parent body of the N.Z.R.S. has asked for a levy of 5/- per member from each of the branches to meet its own considerable expenses, and you will see that we have reached the stage when your Council is going to have to ask members to increase their subscriptions. I shall not enlarge on this, because it will have to be dealt with by my successor, but there it is as a thought for you.

One other piece of news that again will be for my successor to deal with is about the Library, but again I must report on this, since the work in question has been done during my term of office. Briefly, the time has come when the Council feels that the Society can no longer afford even to attempt to keep up a good scientific library. In previous years, we have spent about £50 a year on books to add to our library and, if you think for a moment, you will realise that, with scientific books costing perhaps £5 or £10 each, our £50 does not go far. You will also realise that, in this district with few industries to attract scientists, most of us are amateur scientists and, the few professionals among us will either have books of their own or will have recourse to central libraries. Add to this the fact that our headquarters is in a city with a large annual financial allocation to its Public Library so that it can buy all the scientific books required, and you will perhaps agree with your Council when it feels that the library is no longer an asset that is worth maintaining.

With a view to helping the Society decide what to do about it, we had the library valued by a competent librarian, and we learned that, although it has previously been valued for accounting purposes at £1,000, in actual fact it is at present worth only £450. Most of the