194 HINTS RELATIVE TO 



Buhner's types, and wide margins. The consequence has 

 been, that this expensive system has exhausted nearly the 

 whole of their funds, to the virtual exclusion of many other 

 objects equally important. Their library, exclusive of pre- 

 sents, is proverbially poor, being deficient in the standard 

 works of modern science : and they are obliged to rely chiefly 

 upon the liberality of the Government for the means of be- 

 stowing the annual premiums. I advert to these facts for the 

 purpose, not of disparaging the Society, but to shew the 

 actual working of an old, but injudicious system; a system, 

 moreover, which, if my information be correct, the Society 

 itself is now about to revise and amend, simply from the 

 enormous annual expenditure it entails. If we turn to the 

 Linnaean Society, the same effects are perceptible. Their 

 Transactions, however valuable, completely absorb their funds, 

 and take from them the means of prosecuting, with the least 

 degree of vigour, any one of the objects we shall presently 

 advert to. It might reasonably have been expected, that from 

 so large an income, an annual proportion might have been set 

 aside for the purchase of the Linnaean treasures. By such 

 timely foresight a fund would have been created without the 

 necessity of applying to the members for a large subscription, 

 highly inconvenient to the majority, who, nevertheless, felt, 

 under existing circumstances, the wisdom and urgency of the 

 measure. While speaking of this Society, I must advert to a 

 subject of deep regret to its entomological members, as a 

 disadvantage which more particularly affects them. I allude 

 to the resolution, adopted of late years, by the Council, of not 

 publishing coloured plates of insects, solely, as it is under- 

 stood, from the great expense that attended those immutable 

 figures contained in the twelfth volume. It is not likely that 

 such erudite and invaluable papers will be of frequent occur- 

 rence, and the extra expense they would entail might, there- 

 fore, well be granted. And, in the next place, the Society, 

 by this ill-judged measure of economy, have raised an insu- 

 perable bar to receiving from those few persons capable of 

 furnishing such essays any more of the same description. 



Seeing, therefore, that the publication of Transactions 

 actually absorbs the greatest portion of the funds enjoyed by 

 our chief scientific bodies, yet, knowing also the great good 

 that results from such publicity and dissemination of modern 



