Calendar: 1896-1897 Page 641

REPORT 11 Valuable assistance to the College The successes of Students in these classes during the past year have perhaps been more striking than in any former year In the recent Second Division Examination 100 candidates from all parts of the United Kingdom competed for 125 appointments and 88 of them fell to King's College Students The Council have received this Term with the greatest egret the resignation by Pearce Serocold Esq of the important office of Treasurer which he has held to the great advantage of the College for twenty-five years The Council desire to acknowledge with the utmost gratitude the services which Mr Serocold has rendered to the Institution and the assistance he has been to themselves He has given his time his energy and his influence to the College with un- stinted devotion and he has afforded it the most generous pecuniary support The Council must especially thank him for having stood by the College during its recent difficulties and for reserving his resignation until he could feel that it was placed by its reorganisation on surer footing His name will be cherished in the College as one of its best bene- factors and the Council doubt not the Court will join them in offering him the most hearty expression of gratitude and good wishes They have the greatest satisfaction in stating that the Hon Smith has had the goodness to consent to accept the office of Treasurer thus vacated and they are sure the Court will share the warm sense of obligation they feel to Mr Smith for giving the Institution the very valuable support which his acceptance of this office will afford The Council have great pleasure in stating that Sir Owen Roberts and Mr Preece who withdrew at the end of 1894 have now rejoined them but they have to regret the loss of Mr James William Lowther whose duties as Chair- man of Committees in the House of Commons preclude his attendance The Council in conclusion must express their deep thankfulness for the providential support the College has received in its recent anxieties and their earnest hope and prayer that with the improved system under which it is now organised it may be entering upon period of still greater prosperity than it has yet experienced