160 Transactions of the Society. 



upon the main feature of our Journal — the Abstracts of Current 

 Researches which give to it a world-wide value — and for this pur- 

 pose I have, with the help of the Assistant Secretary, analyzed the 

 figures since 1900. The results of this analysis are printed in 

 extenso as an Appendix to this Address. 



From this document of record it will be seen that from the 

 year 1900, up to and including 1913, the Society published 

 abstracts of 21,295 papers dealing with researches primarily 

 dependent upon Microscopic Manipvilation and Technique, an 

 average of 1,638 in every year, and made up as follows : — 



Vertebrata 3019 



Invertebrata 5723 



Botany 8500 



Microscopy 3286 



Metallurgy 817 



21,295 



During the four years affected by the War (though perhaps the 

 effect of the War sliould not have been seriously felt before 1915) 

 the Society published abstracts of 3925 papers, an average of 981 

 in each year, made up as follows : — 



Vertebrata 599 



Invertebrata 1224" 



Botany 1500 



Microscopy 391 



Metallurgy 211 



3925 



This gives us a total of 25,220 papers abstracted in our Journal 

 since the beginning of the Twentieth Century. 



This reduction in the number of abstracts since 1913 is, how- 

 ever, not so significant of "War conditions as would appear at first 

 sight to be tlie case. In that year it had been decided to reduce 

 the number of published abstracts for several reasons, principal 

 among them being that many Societies were by that time publish- 

 ing abstracts of papers dealing with the microscopical side of the 

 subjects especially included in the scope of their work. In that 

 year, 1913, accordingly, the number of abstracts — excluding 

 Microscopy and Metallurgy — fell to 855, and in 1914 numbered 

 863. It will therefore be observed by a reference to the Table 

 that since the beginning of the War such abstracts have only 

 fallen off on an average by about 20 or 30 per annum, which 

 speaks well for the activity of our Abstractors, regard being had to 

 the increased difficulty in obtaining the foreign journals which 

 afforded a major portion of the material submitted to them. It 

 will be observed that the most noticeable falling off is in the 

 number of papers abstracted dealing with pure Microscopy and 



