It is evident that the Society was now in a most flourishing condition, and had obtained a position seldom, if ever, equalled by any Society in a provincial town. Extraneous assistance was, however, needed to sustain the interests of its members and maintain its prosperity. Papers were contributed, valuable books given, and interesting letters written by many who were not resident in the neighbourhood. These donations are still preserved with religious care. Some of the communications, _e.g._ from such men as Roger and Samuel Gale, Stukeley, the Earl of Oxford, Sir John Clarke, and others are of considerable interest. Four portfolios of drawings and engravings, several ancient manuscripts as well as books of reference, and many books printed in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries are still in the library. A commencement was also made towards forming a museum. The Society annually added to its list of members the names of some of the most learned men of the day. Amongst these we find Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloane, Edward Harley (Earl of Oxford), Roger and Samuel Gale, Dr. Stukeley, Beaupré Bell, Dr. Jurin, Dr. Mortimer (Sec. R.S.), Dr. Massey, Archdeacon Neve, Joseph Banks (father of Sir Joseph Banks), Samuel Wesley, Rev. Dr. Desaguliers (mathematician, a noted Freemason), Dr. Richard Bentley (at that time Master of Spalding Grammar School, but soon afterwards preferred to the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge), William Bogdani, George Vertue, R. Collins and Samuel Buck (the engravers), Lord Coleraine (Pres. Soc. Ant.), Dr. Dodd, Emanuel Mendez da Costa, Charles Jennings (Solyman the Magnificent), Dosithæus (Archimandrite, Abbot of the Monastery of Pantocrateras on Mount Athos), Martin Folkes (the numismatist), Captain John Perry (engineer to the Czar, Peter the Great, but about that time engaged in the drainage of Deeping Fen), Archdeacon Sharp, Rev. Richard Southgate, Thomas Sympson (of Lincoln), Chancellor Taylor, Browne Willis, John Grundy (engineer), and many others of eminence, who are too numerous to mention separately. The attention of the Society was not confined to antiquities, but was also given to discoveries in natural history, to literature, to chemistry, to paintings, sculpture, mathematics, music, and, in fact, anything worthy the attention of cultured men of that period. It had a valuable collection of electrical apparatus. It possessed a physic garden. “We deal,” says Johnson to Archdeacon Neve in 1745-46, “in all the arts and sciences, and exclude nothing from our conversation but politics, which would throw us all into confusion and disorder.”