( o\x ) 



Fellows, and I am silly enough rather to envy my successor 

 the pleasure, which I just miss, of congratulating you on an 

 aggregate of six hundred. But it is a fact of much greater 

 significance, that few of us can remember a year of retrogres- 

 sion in our numbers, and that they have increased since the 

 beginning of the present century by more than forty per 

 cent. 



To myself and to others of our body the past year will be 

 ever memorable in connection with one or more of the many 

 important Scientific Congresses and Celebrations which have 

 occurred in it, in this country, and also in America. Several 

 of these drew together representatives of one branch or all 

 branches of knowledge from every part of the world. Others 

 were national only and so far (but only so far) less important, 

 but otherwise hardly less interesting, and having the same 

 general object of rendering service to Learning and honouring 

 it in tlie persons of its representatives. 



The coincidence within a single year of so many such 

 gatherings — e. g. that the Royal Society, and also the time- 

 honoured Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia, should have 

 celebrated their respective foundations in the same summer — 

 may probably have been more or less an accident. But the 

 increasing frequency of scientific assemblages, and the interest 

 which they create (and that not only in scientific circles), are 

 surely symptomatic — indicating a growing sense of " soli- 

 darity " and community of interests among scientific workers, 

 and a strengthening (not unconnected with this) of their 

 position and influence as a "caste" in the civilised world. 

 At each of these gatherings held last year the Entomological 

 Society was invited to be represented. At five of them I was 

 present myself, either as your appointed delegate, or by 

 invitation addressed to me as your President : at another 

 you were represented by distinguished Transatlantic Fellows : 

 and at another by Professor Bateson. It was a remarkable 

 experience to me to foregather, as your representative, with 

 men of world-wide renown in every department of learning ; 

 and to be received in that capacity, not with consideration 

 merely, but even — if I may say so — like an Ambassador of 

 some Gieat Power ! Looking back on these interesting recol- 



