REPORT 



OP THE 



COUNCIL OF THE RAY SOCIETY, 



Read at the Tenth Anniversary Meeting, held at HULL, Sept. \%th, 1853 ; 

 W. SPENCE, Esa., F.R.S., IN THE CHAIR. 



THE Ray Society was established in the year 1844, for the purpose of publishing 

 and supplying to its Members, original works, translations, and reprints of works, 

 that were not likely, on account of their expense, to be published in the transactions 

 of existing societies, or to be undertaken by publishers, in consequence of the im- 

 probability of their meeting with a remunerative sale. The Council of the Ray 

 Society feel it necessary to remind the Members of this fact, as it will explain, on 

 the one hand, why their works cannot be of a highly popular character, and on 

 the other hand, why they feel that they have a claim on the support of all those 

 who are anxious to promote the study of Natural History Science. As to how 

 the Society has fulfilled its mission, they would appeal to the twenty-two volumes 

 which have already been issued to the Members. Many of them are standard works 

 on the subjects to which they have been devoted, and all have contributed to 

 advance a knowledge of the principles and facts involved in the study of the sciences 

 of Zoology and Botany. 



Since the last Anniversary Meeting of the Society, which was held at Belfast, in 

 September, 1852, the following works have been distributed to the Members: 



1. Vol. I of Mr. C. Darwin's Monograph of the family of Cirripedes; including 



the Sea-acorns (Balant). 



2. Vol. Ill of the Bibliographia Zoologiae et Geologiae, by Professor Agassiz ; 



edited by H. E. Strickland, Esq., F.R.S. 



The Council had hoped that they should have been able to have announced at the 

 present Meeting the distribution of two other works, but circumstances over which 

 they have had no control have prevented their being able to do so. One of these 

 works, the sixth and last part of Messrs. Alder and Hancock's work on the Nudi- 

 branchiate Mollusca, has been deferred on account of the wish of the authors to use 



