THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 311 
of rewarding merit. There are some, however, of 
more recent origin, not yet formed into legal cor- 
porate bodies, and others of a mixed nature, which 
require separate consideration. It will be conse- 
quently necessary, in furtherance of our present 
object, to give the reader some particulars of the 
following, so far as they concern natural history, 
viz. the Royal, Linnean, Geological, Zoological, 
Entomological. 
(218.) The Royal Society, —if we are to judge 
from the contents of the printed Transactions of this 
body, the best criterion, perhaps, we can go by, —the 
Royal Society would seem to have almost banished 
every department of natural history (excepting that 
of comparative anatomy) from among the sciences 
which deserve their attention. At least, the pa- 
pers occasionally to be found in these volumes, 
with few exceptions, are of a meagre and trivial 
nature. We know not whether this circumstance 
originates in the indifference of the council to such 
communications, or from the disinclination of those 
distinguished members, who cultivate this science, 
to hazard the rejection of their papers, or to see 
them lost, as it were, in a mass of others quite un- 
congenial. In former times—prior, indeed, to the 
institution of the Linnzean Society —natural history 
occupied a prominent place in these volumes; but 
such men as Ellis, Banks, and Solander have long 
passed away, and their successors in the same rank 
of science must be sought for in the continental 
academies. If this exclusion of zoological papers 
from the Royal Society’s Transactions be really 
unintentional, it would be as well if some one of the 
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