442 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
pay their bare expenses, should receive its decided 
patronage, and be regularly subscribed for, as a matter 
of course. Nay, the society might go a step further, 
and subscribe for ten or more copies; one of which 
being deposited in the library, the others might be 
distributed by lot, or otherwise, among the members, 
or exchanged with foreign academies, or authors, 
for similar works, not already in the library. 
(304.) The institution of annual prizes or medals 
is another effectual mode of advancing the true know- 
ledge of zoology, and also of honouring and reward- 
ing its votaries. With such enormous funds at their 
disposal, why do not the Zoological Society institute 
two or three annual medals, or premiums, for the 
best essays upon the innumerable subjects belong- 
ing to pure zoological science, now lying open, as 
a field inviting the reapers, but into which no 
one will put his sickle! Why this backwardness 
exists has already been stated. Every writer who 
courts popular applause must make natural history 
light and amusing,—or, in other words, treat his 
subject superficially ; and thus the very few among 
us, who are qualified to extend the boundaries of 
philosophic zoology, abandon original research, which 
is neither regarded nor understood, and betake them- 
selves to a less honourable, but more profitable, oc- 
cupation—the compilation of little volumes, and the 
editing of animal biographies. What more effectual - 
method, therefore, exists, for raising the tone of the 
public mind — of withdrawing it from the compara- 
tively trivial and isolated facts of natural history, to 
its comprehensive sublimities and large generalisa- 
tions —than the institution of prize essays on the 
