XIV PROCEEDINGS OF TUB 



Collection (with the exception of the minerals), which he had more 

 than forty years before obtained under the circumstances which I 

 have hastily detailed, together with his own valuable additions to 

 it both in books and specimens, were purchased by this Society, 

 and now constitutes its richest possession. At the last Anni- 

 versary I had the pleasure of reading to you a report of the Com- 

 mittee appointed by your Council to consider and report upon the 

 state of these Collections, and announced the gratifying fact that 

 they were upon the whole in excellent condition. The recom- 

 mendation of that Committee will now be fully carried out, by the 

 separation and arrangement of the actual Linnean books and spe- 

 cimens, in such a manner as to render them most readily available 

 for consultation. 



And now. Gentlemen, it behoves me to pause for a moment, and 

 ask, what has the Society done during the seventy years of its 

 existence ? What are the records of its progress, and what the 

 results of its labours ? For a reply to this question, I will refer 

 you to the history of Natural Science throughout the world for 

 those seventy years. I will point to the twenty -two volumes of 

 our Transactions, which are to be found, worn by the hands of the 

 students of Natural History, on the shelves of every important sci- 

 entific library in Europe, I may say in the civilized world. I will 

 refer you to the list of our Members, home and foreign, and to the 

 respect in which the Society is held by scientific naturalists in 

 every quarter of the globe. Grentlemen, this is not a vain-glorious 

 boast. It is the simple assertion of a truth, which may be enun- 

 ciated from this chair with honest satisfaction, in the full con- 

 sciousness that it will be responded to by every one that hears me. 

 What, then, must be the responsibilities of the successors of those 

 who have in past times set so illustrious an example ? I have no 

 fear that the character of the Society or its usefulness will suffer, 

 whilst I find the places of those who are gone filled up by a 

 younger race of naturalists, their equals in intelligence, in zeal, 

 and in honesty and truthfulness of purpose. 



Having thus taken a very hurried review of the Society's rise 

 and growth, which I fear must have inflicted on many of you the 

 tsedium of an oft-told tale, I will, with as much brevity as possible, 

 record the circumstances, most interesting to you, which have 

 occurred since our last Anniversary Meeting. I took leave of you 

 then with the announcement, that only on the previous evening 

 had it been satisfactorily determined that the Linnean Society was 

 to have the privilege of occupying rooms in Burlington House, 



