Ixvii 



With these, our o])ituary record properly closes, but I cannot 

 avoid a passing allusion to the great loss which our science has 

 sustained during the past year, in the death of Professor Stal of 

 Stockholm, who, though not one of oui- members, was well-known, 

 either personally or by his works, to many of us. An account of 

 of his life and labom-s has ajDpeared from the pen of Dr. Signoret, 

 in the ' Annals of the Entomological Society of France ' for 1878, 

 p. 177, to Avhich I must refer you for authentic details. When 

 Stal visited this country some sixteen years ago, he was known 

 almost solely as a Coleopterist, being then engaged on his 

 im^Jortant monograph of the American Chrysomehe, but since then 

 he devoted himself with great zeal and success to the study of the 

 Hemiptera. Dr. Signoret gives a list of eighty-seven memoirs 

 which were the result of this indefatigable Entomologist's labom's 

 during a period of twenty-five years. According to our associate, 

 Mr. Distant, whose opinion on such a subject carries authority, 

 " Professor Stal's death is the greatest loss that systematic 

 Entomology has sustained for many years." 



Tm-ning now to the proper subject of this Addi'ess, — the 

 present state and progress of Entomology, — which I regret to 

 be obliged to treat in a very limited and inadequate manner, I 

 will first pass in brief review our own position and labours. 



As yon will have learnt from the Council Report, om- Society 

 continues to make the steady though slow progress wdiich has 

 marked its career for some years past. The balance- between 

 deaths and resignations and new elections leaves the increase on 

 the year of eight members. I find by the valedictory address of 

 M. Reiche, ex-President of the Entomological Society of France, 

 in January, 1878, that om- sister Society across the channel has 

 not for some time received any annual increase. The number of 

 members has remained steady at about four hundi-ed, which an 

 experienced observer like M. Eeiche considers likely to be the 

 maximum, the gains and losses having balanced each other for 

 several years past. I have no doubt that most of us would be 

 glad to point to a total of four hundred members in our own 

 Society, even with the same di-awback of small prospect of 

 increase ; but om' numbers, even with the considerable 

 augmentation of the last fifteen years, at present barely- reaches 

 two hundred and thirty. A Society like om-s, constituted on the 

 plan of the old chartered Societies of the metropolis cannot I 



