LINNEAN SOCIETY OE LONDON. XXIX 



and crippled by the expenses of rent and other requirements, from 

 which others were exempt. It is not necessary for me now to 

 inquire into the causes of this neglect. It were vain now to search 

 for the occasion of the remarkable fact, that while we had for our 

 Presidents in succession, a noble Duke of great Parliamentary 

 influence — another noble Lord, whose connexions have been closely 

 associated with the Government at various times — a venerable 

 Prelate, the brother of a cabinet minister, — no favourable reply 

 could be obtained to our applications for house-accommodation. 

 Such, however, was the case ; and we were obliged to toil on, 

 encumbered with a debt, incurred, not by foolish or unnecessary 

 extravagance, but by the acquisition of a priceless library and col- 

 lection of natural objects, by which circumstance we became the 

 depositary of a sacred and most interesting trust, and while others 

 were, so to speak, basking in the sunshine of official favour, we 

 were thrown upon our own curtailed and inadequate resources. 

 But, Gentlemen, we have no reason to despond. What we have 

 done, we have done for ourselves ; and we may well look with 

 complacency upon our acquisitions, upon our publications, upon 

 our acknowledged usefulness, and upon the character we hold in 

 this and in every other country where natural knowledge is culti- 

 vated, and feel an honest pride in the reflection that we have done 

 all this unpatronized and unassisted. 



Affairs were in this anomalous position when, some years since, 

 a scheme, emanating from several Fellows of the Royal Society, 

 and Members of the Philosophical Club of that Society, was pro- 

 posed and repeatedly discussed at the meetings of the Club, the 

 object of which was to bring about the juxtaposition of scientific 

 Societies, in some commodious and suitable building, worthy of 

 British science, to be provided by the country for that purpose. 

 The only principle upon which such a design could either with 

 justice or with any probability of success be carried out is, juxta- 

 position, but with separate property and independent action — and 

 this was the principle which I have always advocated, and the 

 only one to which my humble sanction could ever have been given. 



Such was the object of a movement which, after many alterna- 

 tions of energy and repose, has at length obtained a partial recog- 

 nition of the great principle which it was its object to promote. 

 It would be taking up your time unnecessarily were I to retrace 

 all the intermediate steps which have <been taken, and the varying 

 phases which the question has assumed. I would however state, 

 that the deputation which waited upon Lord Aberdeen, when his 



