204 PEOCICEDINGS OF THE MALACOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



in coiisidcration of the views expressed in Mr. M. F. Woodward's 

 excellent paper on Ephippodonta published in the first volume of our 

 " Proceedings." 



The year which opened thus sensationally, did not continue one of 

 surprises for the Malacologist, but rather one of that steady work 

 which marks real progress. Firstly, let me consider it as affecting 

 our Society. 



Our members now number 162. The addition to our roll of the 

 names of W. T. Blanford, H. A. Pilsbry, C. E. Beecher, and 

 A. Pavlov, is a guarantee of appreciation by those most competent 

 to judge of our merits ; and as our financial position has improved 

 during the yeai", we have no cause for dissatisfaction with our worldly 

 progress. 



One familiar face has temporarily disappeared from our midst, in 

 the removal of Mr. S. Pace to Toi'res Straits, to conduct during the 

 next few years a series of experiments in pearl culture, and to 

 develop the pearl fisheries. 



We have published papers during the year by our distinguished 

 foreign members Dr. H. Simroth and Mr. H. Suter, and by Professor 

 (jiilson, of Louvain, one of our latest recruits ; and our main supporters, 

 Messrs. Edgar Smith and E. E. Sykes, have given us liberally of the 

 results of their labours. 



Our most trustworthy member, Mr. G. C. Crick, has laid before us 

 two short communications belonging to that class of which, to my 

 mind, we want more ; i.e. they are palooontological. Both are 

 in every way worthy the material described, and of our glorious 

 national collection of which it forms part. The consummate care with 

 which the author has worked out his details, the skill of his recon- 

 structions, the cautiousness of his generalizations, and the beauty of 

 the accompanying illustrations, appear to me equally commendable. 

 An author to whom trouble is a pleasure where truth is to be 

 revealed, to whom order is second nature, and an artist who, if he 

 will, can in some departments outrival his foreign contemporaries, 

 under the guidance of our Editor, have given us a scientific treatise 

 which, being also a finished work of art, realizes the ideal of Huxley, 

 our great master of science and English composition, an ideal which 

 he was never tired of upholding to his followers. Authors of such 

 works, which take time, are nowadays voted s;low ; better, however, 

 one such than a dozen of the slipshod, ill-conceived, oft-inflated 

 'papers,' begotten of mere ambition and desire for notoriety, that at 

 times cover, but do not adorn, the pages of our scientific journals. 



Nor have our exhibits been one wliit behind. 



We have been gratified by the sight of living Petricola pholadiformis, 

 collected on our own coasts, the acumen of our members Messrs. 

 Cooper, Crouch, and Kennard having shown us that the species 

 is appai'ently becoming acclimatized in British waters. Mr. Bulleu 

 Newton has excited our interest and imagination, by laying before 

 us, on behalf of our honoured member Sir Eawson llawson, the 



