Xl PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



sarily applied for the sole gratification of the paying public, yet a 

 fair share is devoted to the real promotion of that science for which 

 all the Fellows are supposed to subscribe — the accurate observation of 

 the animals maintained, the dissection of those that die, and the 

 pubhcation of the results. Physiological experiments are either 

 actually made in the garden or promoted and liberally assisted 

 (such, for instance, as those on the transfusion of blood, the effects 

 or non-effects of which were recently laid before the Eoyal Society . 

 by Mr. F. Galton) ; a very rich zoological library has been formed ; 

 and last year's accounts show a sum of about ^1800 expended in 

 the Society's scientific publications. 



Zoological gardens after the example of the London one have 

 been established, not only in several of our provincial towns, but in 

 various Continental cities, amongst which the more important ones, 

 as I am informed, are those of Amsterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, 

 Cologne, Frankfort, Berlin, Rotterdam, and Dresden, the receipts of 

 the one at Hamburg, for instance, amounting annually, according 

 to the published reports, to between £8000 and £9000. There are 

 also so-called gardens of acclimatization ; but these have not much 

 of a scientific character; their professed object, indeed, is not so 

 much the observation of the physiology and constitution of animals 

 as their modification for practical purposes ; and practically they are 

 chiefly known as places of recreation, and are not always very suc- 

 cessful. The great one in the Bois de Boulogne, now destroyed, out 

 of an expenditure in 1868 of about £7200 showed a deficit of about 

 £1600. A smaller one at the Hague is enabled to pay an annual 

 dividend to its shareholders. 



Living collections of plants have great advantages over those of 

 animals ; they can be so much more extensively maintained at a 

 comparatively small cost. In several botanical gardens several 

 thousand species have been readily cultivated at a comparatively 

 small cost, and species can be represented by a considerable mimber 

 of individuals — a great gain, especially where instmction is the im- 

 mediate object ; the lives of many can be watched through several 

 successive generations, and great facihties are afforded for physio- 

 logical experiments and microscopical observations on plants and 

 their organs whilst still retaining more or less of life. On the other 

 hand, the false data recorded from observations made in botanical 

 gardens have been lamentably numerous and important. A plant 

 in the course of its life so alters its outer aspect that each one can- 

 not be individualized by the keeper of a large collection ; and at one 

 period, that of the seed in the ground, it is whoUy withdrawn from 



