XXXIV 



reckoned, to country members at least, the receipt of a copy of our 

 publications in return for their subscriptions. 



The alteration in the mode of publication of our Transactions, 

 which I announced last year, seems to give general satisfaction. 

 The volume for 1868 was completed and ready for binding in the 

 month of February last. Already five parts of the volume for 1869 

 have been issued, and the completion of the volume only awaits the 

 printing of the Report of this evening's Proceedings. Now that the 

 last outstanding volume of the Third Series, under the old system, 

 has been completed, we have a clear course before us, and may look 

 forward to the issue of yearly volumes in four or more parts, unless 

 unforeseen delays occur, with great regularity. So far, indeed, our 

 Society has a decided pre-eminence, in point of punctuality in the 

 appearance of the annual volume, over all similar Societies at home 

 and abroad. 



Our publications, as in most other scientific Societies, constitute 

 that branch of our activity by which almost alone our usefulness is 

 judged by the outside world of naturalists ; and the long array of 

 volumes of our Transactions on the shelves of great libraries, sought 

 after, studied and quoted, will remain the onl}'^ witnesses of our 

 labours to future generations. These considerations justify the 

 pride we may feel in our published work from year to year. I am 

 inclined to estimate highly the later volumes of our Transactions, as 

 compared with other serials of the same class, and I sincerely trust 

 that we may long continue to number among us so many writers able 

 and willing to contribute valuable papers, as well as artists to 

 illustrate them, and a Secretary of so much industry and good 

 judgment as Mr. Dunning to edit them. 



The volume for the past year comprises twenty-seven memoirs, 

 of which twenty-five belong to the department of systematic or 

 descriptive Entomology, and two only — ^telcome contributions from 

 Mr. Jenner Weir and Mr. Butler, on the selection of insects as food 

 by insectivorous animals — to other branches of the Science. To 

 those who might object that too large a share of our work is 

 occupied by mere descriptions, I would remark that many original 

 and valuable observations on relationships, geographical distribution, 

 and other deeply interesting philosophical questions, are contained in 

 some of our descriptive papers. In fact, it is not at all a necessary 

 consequence that a descriptive treatise should be nothing more than 

 a string of dry definitions. It will become, I hope, more and more 



