14 PaOCEEDINGS OP THE 



The Pbesidbnt's Akniveesaet Addeess. 



Eellows oe the Linnban Society, 



In the year 1856 my predecessor in this chair read in his 

 anniversary address a report adopted by the Council, in which it 

 was considered " desirable that when the Society is able to afford 

 it, the correspondence of Liunseus should be mounted on guards 

 and bound in volumes." Your Council have found themselves in 

 the past year in the fortunate position to be able to consummate 

 this desire, and the collection of letters, about 4000 in number, is 

 now before you, bound in sixteen handsome volumes, Not that it 

 had been in any way neglected in the meantime : our Senior 

 Secretary went over the whole some years ago, and arranged it in 

 the alphabetical order of the writers, thus greatly facilitating its 

 use by those who wished to consult it. The expense incurred by 

 this measure has made an appreciable inroad into the small sum 

 which we can set aside for the development of our Library ; never- 

 theless, when some months ago a similar correspondence of another 

 Naturalist, William Swainson, was offered to the Society, the 

 Council, after much deliberation, decided to secure documents which 

 throw much light upon the life, character, and work of the men 

 to whom we are indebted for the progress made by natural science 

 in this country during the first forty years of the present ceutury. 

 Among them Swainson takes a prominent position — chiefly, indeed, 

 as a zoological writer; but your Council, before deciding upon 

 the matter, received the additional assurance that the acquisition of 

 this correspondence would be also desirable in a botanical point of 

 view. From the uncomfortable feeling that we were drawing upon 

 resources of the Society which should be devoted to much-felt, 

 immediate needs, rather than to what might facetiously be called 

 a luxury, we were relieved by the approval of the Trustees of the 

 Bentham Fund and of three of our Fellows, who between them 

 have contributed <£50, the sum required for the purchase ; a 

 fourth has promised to defray the cost of the binding, so that 

 the correspondence will be on the shelves of our Library free of 

 any charge to our exchequer. Our best thanks are due to the 

 liberal donors, and we cannot show our gratitude to them in a more 

 appropriate manner than by rendering these letters and their 

 contents accessible to all who interest themselves in this kind of 

 historical enquiry. 



With this object in view, I have undertaken to peruse the whole 

 of the correspondence, and to catalogue the letters with the 

 shortest possible indication of their contents. As to the mode of 

 arrangement, I have prepared two manuscripts : one in the form 

 of a rough draft is purely chronological ; in the other I have 

 followed the plan adopted for the Linnean correspondence, viz., 

 an arrangement in alphabetical order of the writers. The latter 

 will prove to be the more useful guide ; for, as the collection 

 consists principally of letters addressed to Swainson, and compara- 

 tively very few written by himself, it is evident that the informa- 



