LTNNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 39 



has been fully realized. Our roll of Fellows is larger, our income 

 is correspondingly increased, the library has had many gaps filled 

 up and is being kept abreast of scientific literature, and our pub- 

 lications have so improved that the extent of the letterpress and 

 the fulness of the illustrations must, I am sure, often surprise 

 the Fellows. 



For the first fifty years of our existence the members were 

 satisfied with one annual part of the Transactions, which in two 

 three, or four years made up a volume. In 1838, under the pre- 

 sidency of the Bishop of Norwich, the octavo Proceedings were 

 instituted with a view of giving to the Fellows a regular account 

 of each meeting of the Society, in place of the occasional and 

 fragmentary abstracts from the Minutes which occupied a few 

 pages at the end of each volume of the Transactions. This serial, 

 issued without a cover, in sheets or half-sheets, as occasion re- 

 quired, received the numerous short and less important commu- 

 nications which otherwise would not have been published by the 

 Society. In 1855 this ephemeral serial was found to be inadequate 

 to the requirements of the Society, and it was resolved to issue a 

 regular quarterly journal, in which would be published communi- 

 cations for which the quarto form was neither necessary nor 

 desirable. For more than thirty years this Journal has been 

 issued, the necessities of the Society, however, requiring in later 

 years more frequent publication ; each year it has increased in 

 importance, without diminishing in extent or value the quarto 

 Transactions, the 45 volumes of which, together with an equal 

 number of volumes of the octavo Journal, containing a series of 

 zoological and botanical memoirs fully illustrated, supply the 

 best testimony to the great services which the Linnean Society 

 is rendering to science. Our distinguished position among the 

 scientific societies of the country, and indeed of the world, is, I 

 venture to say, less due to our venerable age than to the remark- 

 able activity of our Fellows, the importance of their work, and 

 the speedy and efficient manner in which their communications 

 are put before the world. 



During the past year we have published seven parts of our 

 Transactions, four devoted to botany and three to zoology, con- 

 taining 429 pages, 89 plates, and 2 maps. Twenty numbers of 

 the Journal have been issued during the same time, nine being 

 botanical and eleven zoological, containing 1151 pages, 51 plates, 

 and 54 woodcuts, together with the Proceedings for the year, 

 requiring G5 pages of letterpress. It requires but a hasty glance 

 at these various publications to show that their bulk is not their 

 most remarkable feature. They contain papers of the higliest 

 importance in all departments of science. Not everything sub- 

 mitted to the Society finds a place in our publications. As is 

 well known, every communication is reported upon by one or 

 more experts in the subject treated, and is afterwards carefully 



