72 RAY AND PAL.i:ONTOGRAPHICAL SOCIETIES. 



President, Sir H. De la Beche ; Treasurer, Mr. Searles V. Wood ; 

 Secretary, Professor Morris ; and Auditors, Messrs. A. G. Melville and 

 J. Tennant. The first list contained 3fi2 subscribers, who have since 

 increased — notwithstanding losses, deaths, &c. — to nearly 500 at the 

 present time, and the amount expended in Monographs during the thirty 

 years of the Society's existence has been £21,200. The plan of publication 

 is similar to that adojited by the Kay Society. Each suliscriber of one 

 guinea is entitled to receive a quarto volume, containing from foi'ty to 

 fifty quarto plates and necessaiy letter-press. It is not found practicable, 

 on account of the comprehensive character of the Monographs, to issue 

 annually one complete work at a time, and consequently as many as six 

 parts of various Monogi-aphs have sometimes been included in the 

 volume. These may be collected and bound together subsequently or the 

 series may be left in chronological order as issued, easy reference being 

 had to any Monograph in particular from the comi^rehensive indices 

 prepared by the Secretary. In the volume for 1878 thei-e will be eight 

 parts, including two new subjects — the Liassic Ammonites and the Fishes 

 allied to the modern Ceratodus ; the completion of an old Monograph 

 — that on the Merostomata; and a particularly interesting treatise on 

 the relation between the Pleistocene mammaUa and those of the 

 pi-csent historic periods together, the estimated cost being £800. 

 The following are among the more remarkable works published by this 

 society : — The Carboniferous and Crag Foramiuifera, the Fossil Corals, the 

 Polyzoa of the Crag, the Echinodermata of the Oolitic and Cretaceous 

 Formations, the MoUusca of the Crag, Eocene, and Great Oolite Strata ; 

 the Fossil Brachiopoda, the Fossil Merostomata, the Trilobites, the 

 Belemnites, the Carboniferous Fishes, the Eeptilia of the Liassic and 

 Wealden Formations, and the Mammalia of the Mesozoic System, and of 

 the Pleistocene and Crag Foi-mations. The Council state in their last 

 Eeport that "many years must elapse and many additional wi-itors be 

 enrolled ere the task of figuring the whole of the fossils of the British 

 area be completed." 



It has been attempted to be shown -nnthin the compass of this 

 necessarily brief account what thorough good work the Eay and Palajonto- 

 graphical Societies are doing to advance the cause of Natural History. 

 From the figures already quoted, it will be seen that an aggregate of more 

 than forty-three thousand ^wi/H^s, or an average of £1,300 per annum, has 

 been expended by both Societies in little over thii-ty years, and this, be it re- 

 membered, has been purely voluntary, and without any help whatever 

 from Government, but frequently supplemented by consideral)lo pecuniary 

 assistance from the talented authors, to whom the subscribers arc indebted 

 for the works themselves. It is evident that, with larger resources, the use- 

 fulness of both Societies might be gi-eatly extended. At pi-esent, for each 

 guinea subscription, the issue is one volume per annmu, which might be 

 increased to two if means justified the respective Councils, and thus the 

 publication of many additional valuable works, some of which have 

 appeared for years in the Prospectus, and then been withdi-awn, could be 

 undertaken. It would be a gi'aceful act if every Society in our Union, 

 not on the lists, would subscribe, as well as each working naturalist, 



