( Ivii ) 



The obituary notices which I have now conchided have 

 occupied so much of the time devoted to this Address that 

 httle remains for other matter, but there is one subject of great 

 interest to our Society upon which I should hke to say some- 

 thing. The Catalogue of the books contained in our 

 Library, which was commenced by our late excellent Libra- 

 rian, Mr. Ferdinand Grut, has made under his successor, Mr. 

 Champion, sufficient progress to enable me to say a few 

 words respecting it. The manuscript is already completed, 

 and in the printer's hands, and the number of titles of works 

 of various kinds nearly reaches 5000. As most of our 

 Fellows know, our Library contains a large number of pam- 

 phlets, being authors' copies of their papers printed in many 

 of the various journals of the scientific societies in different 

 parts of the world. One of the first questions that arose in 

 fixing the scope of our new Catalogue, was whether or not 

 these should all be entered under separate headings, as if 

 they were separate, independent works. The decision that 

 they should be so entered has more than doubled the number 

 of titles in the Catalogue, but at the same time has, in my 

 opinion, more than doubled its utility to our Fellows. It is 

 of the greatest importance to the growth of our Library and 

 the utility of our Society that our Fellows should have as free 

 access to our books as possible, and these separate " papers " 

 are exactly in the form that is most convenient to lend to our 

 country Fellows for use in their own homes. We may hope, 

 therefore, that this branch of our Librai-y may be constantly 

 and largely increased, for, besides the advantage already 

 mentioned of facility of loan distribution, these pamphlets 

 occupy a comparatively small space on our shelves, and are 

 much more economically housed than books, which often 

 contain matter which is not entomological, and therefore 

 outside the studies to which we especially devote ourselves. 

 We have only to look at the pages of the ' Zoological Record ' 

 to see how important, to a Society like ours, whose means 

 are, alas! far too limited, concentration of subjects and 

 economy of space become. We need only look at the 

 volume for 1891, which, through the untiring energy of 

 Dr. Sharp, one of our late Presidents, has now been for 



PROC. ENT. HOC. LOXD., V., 1892. I 



