ADDRESS 



ON 



THE RECENT PROGRESS AND PRESENT STATE 

 OF ENTOMOLOGY. 



Gentlemen, 



An rising, at the request of our late most excellent President, — whose 

 departure from the Chair this evening will, I am sure, be regarded 

 ■with the utmost regret by every member of this Society, — whose 

 kindness, urbanity, and efficiency have afforded a most valuable 

 model to our future Presidents, — to lay before you a statement of the 

 recent progress and present state of Entomology, I must at the out- 

 set bespeak your kindness towards the attempt which I am about to 

 make, feeling fully convinced of my own inefficiency to do justice to 

 a subject of such extent as well as importance. I could, indeed, have 

 wished that notwithstanding the immerous avocations of our late Pre- 

 sident, he would still have found sufficient leisure for the task, feeling 

 equally convinced that in his hands ample justice would have been 

 done to the subject, founded upon the possession both of a magni- 

 ficent collection of insects and a splendid librarj^, in which the neces- 

 sarj' materials for such a labour as I have undertaken are alone to be 

 found. As, however, the case is othenvise, and as he has been pleased 

 to place this subject in my hands, 1 know not how I can do better 

 than to select as my model the address delivered by himself before 

 the Zoological Club of the Linnaean Society in the year 1827. Let 

 us hope that our Society may flourish as that Society has done which 

 originated in the assembly before which the address alluded to was 

 delivered ; let us hope that whatever trifling feuds may have arisen 

 amongst entomologists, — for so long as " humanum est errare," so 

 long will there be presumed matters of oft'ence, even where no 

 offence was intended, — let us hope, I say, that such will be allowed 

 to die away and sink into nothingness before the sacred cause of 

 trutli and science. 



It has always appeared to me that scarcely any kind of ])ublication 

 surpassed in utility, annual or other periodical summaries, in whicii 



