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I am sure that I carry with me the feehngs and wishes of every 

 British member of the Congress. 



I imagine that in the choice of Oxford for the second meeting 

 of the Congress a determining factor was the existence of the 

 Hope Department — the great collection of insects given to the 

 University more than sixty years ago by one of her own sons, 

 and immensely increased by the great name and fame of my 

 distinguished predecessor, Professor J. O. Westwood. 



The choice of Oxford gives me the opportunity of expressing 

 gratitude to all those who made the Hope Department — above all 

 to the founders, the Rev. F. W. Hope and his widow Ellen Hope, 

 and to the first Hope Professor, John Obadiah Westwood. It 

 enables me to acknowledge for him the obligation he had no such 

 great opportunity as this of expressing. 



I have brought with me the Visitors' Book of the Hope De- 

 partment, and in it we see that members of the University first 

 came, on June 12th, 1850, to look at the fine collections, which 

 had just arrived in Oxford. The long list of names shows the 

 immediate interest and attention which were excited in Oxford 

 by the gift of the Rev. F. W. Hope. The book has received many 

 hundreds of signatures since that date, and preserves a record 

 of the distinguished entomologists who have visited the Hope 

 Collection during sixty-two years ; but it is not quite full even 

 now, and I propose to devote the few unoccupied pages to the 

 preservation of the signatures of the members of this Congress. 

 The visitors' book will be placed on a table in the adjoining 

 writing-room, and I hope that every member of the Congress will 

 do me the favour of inscribing his or her name, and thus complete 

 the volume that was begun in 1850. 



The Hope Collection was not at first a very large one. In 

 the year 1857 Professor Westwood drew up a detailed inventory 

 in which the contents of 903 cabinet drawers are briefly described : 

 but Mr. Hope was an ideal benefactor, who, for the remainder of 

 his life, never ceased to augment his original gift, buying and 

 adding to it everything of interest to entomological science 

 which he had the chance of acquiring. For about ten years the 

 Hope Collection remained in the Taylorian Building, where it was 

 first accommodated, but it was moved, on the completion of the 

 new University Museum, to a part of the space which it now 



