LISNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. V 



ture. Our enlarged accommodation, combined with high prices, 

 will add much to our household expenses. We are threatened 

 with a repeal of the Act which exempts us from parochial rates. 

 Nearly the whole of our library having within the last three 

 weeks passed through my hands, I have become convinced that 

 it will require a large outlay in binding as well as in filling 

 up gaps to render it really efiicient. And, above all, we must 

 bear in mind that the chief means we have of promoting the scien- 

 tific objects for which we are associated, the only way in which 

 we can render them available to our numerous Fellows resident in 

 our colonies is through our publications ; and heavy as have been 

 of late years our printer's and artists' bills, they will and ought 

 to become heavier and heavier still. To render fully available the 

 assistance we have received from Grovernment, we require conti- 

 nued and increased support from our Fellows and from the scien- 

 tific public. "We reckon already among our Fellows the great 

 majority of those who have acquired a name in zoology or botany, 

 and I earnestly hope that all men of means who take a sincere in- 

 terest in biological pursuits will think it a pleasure as well as a 

 duty to contribute, directly or indirectly, to the support of the 

 Linnean Society of London. 



With regard to future arrangements in the new phases of life 

 into which the Society has entered, the Council has kept in view 

 three great objects — the endeavour to render our Meetiugs at- 

 tractive, the extended usefulness of our library, and the steady 

 maintenance of our publications. On Meeting-nights the library 

 will be open at 7 o'clock, the Chair will be taken in the Meeting- 

 room at 8 o'clock, as at present ; and after the Meeting the Fel- 

 lows will adjourn to tea in the Council-room upstairs, opposite to, 

 and in direct communication with, the library. The extended shelf- 

 room in the library has enabled a classification of the books to be 

 made which will render those most frequently consulted much more 

 readily accessible than heretofore ; and as evidence that there is no 

 relaxation in our publishing department, I have to announce that 

 besides the two Numbers of our Journal, one in Zoology and the 

 other in Botany, which have been sent out since our last Meeting, 

 two new Parts of our Transactions are in the course of delivery, 

 the concluding one of volume xxviii. and the second of Colonel 

 Grrant's volume xxix. The first part of volume xxx. is in the 

 printer's hands. 



