LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 1 9 



actually done catalofrne-work know that if it is to be high-class 

 work, it must of necessity take a considerable time. The Council, 

 taking a practical view, engaged an expert in such work to pre- 

 pare a Catalogue which, though perhaps not in the highest degree 

 elaborated, will be, we are satisfied, creditable to the Society in 

 literary form, and sufficiently useful to the Fellows as an Index 

 to the Library. Though this Catalogue has been, I regret to say, 

 delayed by the temporary illness of the compiler, the complete 

 MS. is now in the hands of the printers, and seven sheets have 

 been set up in type. During the past year the sum spent in 

 " continuations " of periodicals for the Library has been £210 ; 

 and in view of the extra expenditure in printing, it has been 

 thought prudent not to lay out any money beyond the £240 in 

 books until the new Catalogue is in the hands of the Library 

 Committee. 



Obituaries. 



The Society has become so large, and its annual losses by death 

 proportionally so numerous, that the Obituary Notices can no 

 longer be delivered in the Presidential Address. I cannot, how- 

 ever, refrain altogether from reference to the grave losses which our 

 Society has sustained by death during the past year. Among other 

 Foreign Members of the first rank we have lost Baillou ; but 

 pre-eminently among all. Foreign and Home, we have lost Huxley. 

 I cannot attempt to review his chief work. Biology : I may recall 

 to your minds his paper on Gentians in our Journal, Bot. vol. xxiv. 

 (1887-88), in which will be found recorded a great number of 

 minute observations on the flowers of Gentians, their varied forms, 

 the glands on the corolla or on the ovary, their advantage to the 

 plants, and the use which might be made of them in arranging 

 the Gentians systematically. It is to me very interesting that, 

 at a time when his mind must have been filled with other subjects 

 and revolving larger generalizations, he should have ben able to 

 occupy himself, as if for relaxation, with botanic field-work. He 

 was in the broadest sense a naturalist ; and very many among us 

 must feel how narrow our own field is in comparison with his, 

 though we may be doing very useful work and all that our talents 

 and opportunities enable us to do. 



Collectors' Numhers. 



The method of numbering plants adopted by collectors is a 

 matter which I have come to regard as of primary importance. 

 Collectors' numbers are often cited extensively, while, on the 

 contrary, some authors of the greatest experience eschew them. 

 The explanation of this difterence was given me many years ago 

 by M. Alphonse DeCaudolle, who observed that there are two 

 radically difterent kinds of numbering in use by botanists. 



In the one method the collector attaches one field-number to 



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