60 



animal able to compete in useful qualities witli those 

 which, as is the case with all of our limited number of 

 domestic animals, have gradually acquired the peculiarities 

 making them valuable to man, by the accumulation of 

 slight improvements through countless generations of 

 ancestors. While all our pressing wants are so well 

 supplied by the animals we already possess, it can no 

 longer pay to begin again at the beginning with a new 

 species. This appears to be the solution of the singular 

 fact, scarcely sufficiently appreciated, that no addition of 

 any practical importance has been made to our stock of 

 truly domestic animals since the commencement of the 

 historic period of man^s life upon earth. 



I now turn to the history of one of the most important 

 features of the Society, the scientific meetings. In the 

 early days of the Society there was only one class of 

 general meetings for business of all kinds ; and the exhi- 

 bition of specimens and the communication of notices on 

 subjects of zoological interest formed part of the ordinary 

 proceedings at those meetings. The great extent, how- 

 ever, of the general business was soon found to interfere 

 with such an arrangement. The number of the elections, 

 and of the recommendations of Candidates, the reports on 

 the progress of the Society in its several establishments 

 during each month, and other business, were found to re- 

 quire so much time as to leave little for scientific commu- 

 nications, and the Council saw with regret that these were 

 frequently and necessarily postponed for matters of more 

 pressing but less permanent interest. To obviate this in- 

 convenience and to afford opportunities for the reception 

 and discussion of communications upon zoological subjects, 

 the Council had recom-se to the institution of a " Com- 

 mittee of Science and Correspondence," composed of such 

 Members of the Society as had principally applied them- 

 selves to science; at the meetings of which Committee 

 communications upon zoological subjects might be received 

 and discussed, and occasional selections made for the 

 purpose of publication. 



The first Meeting of the Committee took place on the 

 evening of Tuesday, November 9th, 1830, at the Society's 

 house in Bruton Street, when a communication was re- 

 ceived upon the Anatomy of the Urang Utan by a young, 

 and then unknown, naturalist, Richard Owen by name, 

 the first of that long series of memoirs, extending over a 



