22 TEE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



H. T. Colebrooke, G. B. Greenliougli, Joseph Sabine (Treasurer), 

 Charles Stokes, N. A. Vigors (Secretary), and Charles Baring 

 Wall, M.P. 



It is recorded in the minutes that " the President then 

 proceeded to read an opening address to the Society, in which 

 he took a review of the past and present state of zoology in this 

 country, and entered into a detail of the objects and plans of 

 the Society." It seems probable that this address was never 

 printed, and that the manuscript has been lost. There is no 

 reference to it in Lady Raffles's " Memoir," and the late Rev. R. 

 Blanchard Raffles, who made a special study of the early history 

 of the Society, was unable to trace it. Mr. Demetrius C. Boulger, 

 his literary executor, who summarised his results in the 

 Athenceum (March 4, 18, 1905), says, " No copy of Sir Stamford's 

 address has yet been found." It is, perhaps, unnecessary to 

 add that nothing is known of it at the Society's offices. 



The tone of the following extract from the Literary Gazette 

 (May 26, 1826, p. 282) leaves a good deal to be desired, but the 

 paragraph is important, for it contains independent evidence of 

 the existence of a manuscript. It may be noted that the point 

 to which the writer gives prominence is that attributed to 

 Sir Humphry Davy* — the introduction and domestication of 

 new forms : 



Zoological, oe Noah's Ark Society. 

 A public meeting took place on Saturday last (April 29) at the rooms of 

 the Horticultural Society, at which about a hundred persons were present. 

 Sir Stamford Raffles was called to the chair, and read an address recommend- 

 ing the formation of a society the object of which should be to import new 

 birds, beasts and fishes into this country from foreign parts. The Regent's 

 Park is to be headquarters ; though if the subscriptions amount to a 

 sufficient sum, it is hoped that strange reptiles may be propagated all over 

 the kingdom. But there is neither wisdom nor folly new under the sun. 

 Worthy Dr. Plot informs us in his History of Oxfordshire that King Henry 

 the First enclosed the park at Wvdestoc " with a wall, though not for deer^ 

 but all foreign wild beasts^ such as lions, leopards, camels, linx's, which he 

 procured abroad of other princes ; amongst which more particularly, says 

 William of Malmeshury, he kept a porcupine hispidis setis coopertam, quas 

 in canes insectantes naturaliter emittunt, i.e. covered over with sharp-pointed 

 quills, which they naturally shoot at the dogs that hunt them." This is 

 the first British National Menagerie that we have read of : the Romans 



* See Note from " Collected Works of Sir H. Davy," on p. 24. 



