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made to Entomology. Mr. Bowdler Sharpe advises me that 

 Birds maybe taken roughlyat 12,000 already described species, 

 Mammals may probably be taken at less than 8000, Mollusca 

 at about 50,000, and so on, and although such estimates can 

 be merely approximate, I claim that the proportionate im- 

 portance of the different groups in point of numbers will be 

 found to be not very wide of the mark. If there are 2,000,000 

 species of insects in the world, of which only some 200,000 

 are at present described, according to the present rate of 

 progress, or adding 5,600 in each year, it would take 340 

 years to describe the remaining 1,800,000. I am aware that 

 Dr. Sharp, in his Address to this Society in 1888, put the 

 annual additions at a much lower figure, and asked for an 

 allowance of 1000 years to complete the lists ; but I think the 

 rate of progress has been greater than he supposed. 



It must surely occur to my hearers that such work can 

 never be successfully undertaken by private enterprise or 

 detached and unsystematic efforts, however large may be the 

 number of faithful and devoted workers. Organisation and 

 resource are required for carrying on the necessary investiga- 

 tions and for placing the results from time to time in such 

 systematic sequence as will enable students not only to have 

 access to, but, as it were, to digest and assimilate the informa- 

 tion necessary to enable them to pursue their own special 

 lines of enquiry. 



We naturally turn to the great educational and scientific 

 institutions of the country for that methodical assistance 

 which their means of accumulating and arranging materials 

 for study should enable them to afford. 



The only Government establishment in which such work 

 has been, or can be, suitably undertaken, is the British 

 Museum. It may be useful to consider what has hitherto been 

 done there — what is the quantity and quality of the work ex- 

 pected of it by the public, and what are the means at its dis- 

 posal for dealing with such work, present and prospective. 



The value of the vast entomological collections in the 

 National Museum can scarcely be overrated, containing, as 

 they do, an enormous percentage of the actual types from 

 which the leading authors on the subject during this and the 

 last century have made their descriptions. 



