{ xli ) 



own language are accepted for publication in the Trans' 

 actions of all foreign societies, with I believe the exception 

 of one, and by nearly all foreign magazines. This is an 

 immense advantage to English students, though for a time 

 perhaps a disadvantage to the students of other nationalities, 

 though even to them the disadvantage is not very great, inas- 

 much as it is now impossible for any good work to be done 

 unless the student can comprehend English and German. 

 This tendency is likely to increase with the vast amount of 

 work done by our Transatlantic cousins, and it is of course 

 admitted that works in Russian, Hungarian, Japanese, etc., 

 are outside anything that a scientihc student must examine. 



Societies. Perhaps the greatest advance which has taken 

 place in the nineteenth century has been the formation of 

 Entomological and other Scientific Societies. These societies 

 have enabled the students in various countries to combine 

 together, and, by their mutual work and subscriptions, to issue 

 a very great amount of exceedingly useful scientific work to 

 the public which would otherwise have failed to find an outlet. 

 Of course even this has not been entirely a gain, as our own 

 minutes would show that we have at times published such 

 worthless papers from certain prolific authors that a resolution 

 has been passed that no more papers should be accepted from 

 such and such an author. Naturally the simple result has been 

 that the discarded author has tendered his rejected paper to 

 some other society, and the Entomological Society has beard 

 of him no more, but his more than worthless articles may 

 continue to be published to the world by some other society. 

 On the other hand these societies cannot help having an eye 

 to their own continuance, and consequently to their own 

 funds, and therefore at times a valuable communication may 

 be looked at askance, because it may be expensive to publish, 

 and command very little return, though even then the 

 support of the Royal Society often enables the publication of 

 such valuable but expensive papers. 



I believe that the Societe Entomologique de France, which 

 was founded in 1832, is the oldest of the existing Scientific 

 Entomological Societies — I omit the Entomological Club, 

 which met last night, as, although older, I consider it more 



PROC. ENT. SOC. LOND. V,, 1900. E 



