11 PBOCEEDINQS OF THE 



details of it proceediags. And our own department in natural 

 science is now admitted to be one of the most important branches 

 of general science, specially important in its relation to our mate- 

 rial prosperity. Our food and raiment, the essentials of life, are 

 derived exclusively from the animal and vegetable kingdoms ; and 

 biological products contribute largely to many of our luxuries ; 

 whilst, on the other hand, some of the greatest calamities with 

 which we are afflicted are due to the rapid development of animal 

 or vegetable life. Many are the associations, under Government 

 as well as individual patronage, devoted to the improvement and 

 increase of useful animals and plants ; and of late attention has 

 been also devoted to the arrest of the ravages of the noxious ones, 

 the balance of natural selection being disturbed by the inter- 

 ference of agriculture and animal education. The due study of 

 the means of restoring this balance, of turning it more and more 

 in our favour, of calling in to our aid more and more of the 

 hitherto neglected available species or of the hitherto latent pro- 

 perties of those already in use, of checking the progress of blights 

 and murrains, requires a thorough knowledge of the animals and 

 plants themselves ; and that thorough know^ledge can only be ob- 

 tained by the scientific study not only of particular animals and 

 plants supposed a priori to be useful or noxious, but of all ani- 

 mals and plants, which it is the special province of our Society 

 to promote. And in this respect I think it will be generally ad- 

 mitted that we have not been neglectful of our duty, and that we 

 have done our part in rendering effective the support we luive of 

 late years received from Grovernment, as well as from individuals, 

 and in establishing a sound claim for its increase and continuance. 

 Besides the aid afforded to scientific researches by our largely 

 augmented library, the great value of the papers published in the 

 recent volumes of our Transactions and Journal has been acknow- 

 ledged abroad as well as at home. It is in our Society, for in- 

 stance, that the great Darwinian theories were first promulgated ; 

 and it must be recollected that the five or six hundred copies of 

 our publications regularly sent out place the researches they ex- 

 hibit at once at the disposal of the leading followers of the science 

 in all parts of the world. It is true that these great additions to 

 our efficiency are not entirely due to Grovernment patronage, but 

 are the direct results of the reforms introduced by Dr. Hooker in 

 1855. Those reforms, however, would have lost much of their 

 efi'ect had we remained confiued to our old quarters in Soho 



