PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



(SESSION 1873-74.) 



November 6th, 1873. 



G-EOEGE Bentham, Esq., F.E.S., President, in the Chair. 



Before the commencement of the regular Proceedings, the Pre- 

 sident delivered the following Address on the present position of 

 the Society and its relation to Government : — 



Gentlemen, 

 It is now seventeen years since the Government first recognized 

 the claims of our Society to encouragement and assistance on the 

 part of the State, as one which devoted itself to scientific pursuits 

 unremunerative to its members, but tending, directly or indi- 

 rectly, to public benefit ; and since then a sense of the justness of 

 such claims on the part of pure natural science has become gra- 

 dually more general. We are no longer in the days when a 

 Peter Pindar could turn the Royal Society and its President into 

 ridicule as boiling fleas to ascertain whether they turned red like 

 lobsters. The ' Times,' instead of a short leader dismissing the 

 British Association Meetings in a similar strain of banter, devotes 

 daily, during the time of its session, half a dozen columns to the 



LINN. PROC. — Session 1873-74. h 



