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intentions, with much anxiety and exertion for promoting the Society's 

 objects and interests, on the part of those same persons who were 

 nevertheless so impeding and neutralizing mine, simply through their 

 own insufficient apprehension of the true requisites for scientific pro- 

 gress. They were doing good service, adulterated with disservice, at 

 the same time ; and conscious of the former, but unconscious of the 

 latter, they doubtless deemed my remonstrances and grumblings 

 highly unreasonable. Nevertheless, although much might have been 

 better done, and it would have been much better if other things had 

 not been done at all, there really was some onwai'd progress and im- 

 provement between 1840 and 1844. The Society gained useful mem- 

 bers ; experiments were tried, which, though unsuccessful at the time, 

 led the way to better measures ; and I make no doubt that, on the 

 whole, the number of mislabelled specimens was proportionally much 

 less. 



From 1844, inclusively, the London Society has advanced with 

 rapid and safe progress in that one branch of its operations which I 

 have myself always considered to be in truth more like the main stem, 

 although various other objects are or were ostensibly embraced in its 

 projected ramifications. It will readily be surmised that I am here 

 alluding to the operations of the Society regarded as an institution for 

 mutual interchange of specimens ; — for bringing into one convenient 

 centre, and re-distributing thence the products of various localities and 

 countries; — for diffusing through Britain a large number of carefully 

 labelled specimens, and thus conveying instruction to isolated or 

 provincial botanists, whose opportunities for examining authentic spe- 

 cimens in other herbaria may be few and far between. This function 

 of the Society appears to me a highly important and useful one. For 

 any other purpose than this one, 1 fear that the Botanical Society of 

 London can only be deemed valueless at present. True, the same 

 zeal and perseverance of a few individuals, which has planned and 

 gradually worked out the distributing system to its present state of 

 practical efficiency, may be extended into other departments also. 

 But an almost insuperable bar to anything like general efficiency, is 

 found in the slender finances of the Society. After payment of rent 

 and other local and fixed expenses, nothing remains to offer as a re- 

 muneration for skilled and competent labour; which is a marketable 

 commodity not often to be got without payment. Services which are 

 offered for nothing, too often are found to be worth very little ; and 

 those which can be bought for little, are likely to prove worth nothing 

 at all. 



