where all the
children might be properly attended to and taken care of.

This being done, a committee of overseers and guardians were appointed
to superintend the institution: they being made choice of annually,
meet every Monday for the purpose of examining the demands on the
asylum drawing cheques for the amount of the bills on the cashier of
the workhouse, and inspecting the state of the institution.

The average number of children who have been maintained, cloathed,
and educated, for the last twelve months, has been three hundred and
eighty; of whom three hundred are employed in manufacturing of pins,
straw plat, and lace. The produce of the children's labour since the
institution was established, has been progressively accumulating,
and that to such a degree, that the committee have been enabled to
purchase the premises they inhabit, with about two acres of land,
which with the additional buildings and improvements, are now worth
nearly six thousand pounds, and are the property of the parish.

The whole of this information is very interesting, but what follows is
highly deserving of attention. This account was written at the asylum,
in the middle of November, 1818, when there was not in this numerous
family one sick person.

_Philosophical Society._

This institution is indebted for its origin to a few scientific
inhabitants, who held a meeting in the year 1800, and having disclosed
their ideas to others, they afterwards formed themselves into a
society, who having engaged premises and procured proper apparatus,
devoted a considerable portion of their time to experimental
philosophy; occasionally delivering lectures among their own members.
This being carried on as a private society for several years,
continually increasing in numbers, they in the year 1813 purchased
commodious premises in Cannon-street, which they fitted up in a
similar manner to the Royal Institution in London, and it is now
become a most valuable establishment. The various lectures that have
been delivered by the different fellows of this society, on mechanism,
chemistry, mineralogy, and metallurgy, have produced very beneficial
effects, and contributed in a considerable degree to the improvement
of gilding, plating, bronzing, vitrification, and metallurgic
combinations. At one of these lectures, in the year 1812, Dr. De Lys
descanted upon the advantages an unfortunate class of society (the
deaf and dumb) might derive, if they were put un