338 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 
good work has been done, and it may be said that practically all the know- 
ledge we possess of the zoology of the county is due to the existence of the 
Society. The prehistoric archzology and the topography of the county have 
also received much attention, the most complete list extant of the maps of 
any Enylish county being that of Hertfordshire published by the Society. 
It runs to 164 pages, has maps and other illustrations, and cost £62, the 
author providing the blocks for the illustrations and contributing towards 
the expense of printing the last of the four parts of which it consists. Of 
other important papers may be mentioned one of thirty-two pages on Hert- 
fordshire earthquakes and a list of Hertfordshire Diptera of twenty-eight 
pages. 
The Transactions have from the first been almost entirely devoted to the 
publication of the results of local scientific investigations. Fifteen volumes, 
comprising 4,900 pages with ninety-one plates and numerous text-figures, 
have been published at a cost of £1,700, and a new volume has been com- 
menced, but owing to want of funds we are a year behindhand, having only. 
just printed the papers read during the session 1907-8. 
The Society has accumulated, chietly by exchanges and the Pryor bequest, 
a valuable scientific library, but from want of funds for its proper accommo- 
dation it is stored in an almost inaccessible room lent gratuitously by the 
Watford Urban District Council, and the subscription to several scientific 
journals has had to be discontinued. 
The formation of a museum was commenced, and the collections formed 
the nucleus of the Hertfordshire County Museum at St. Albans, which the 
Society was almost solely instrumental in founding. The museum is free, 
and has, on the average, from 150 to 200 visitors per week. It has been made, 
by a member of the Society, a Climatological Station, and a Daily Weather 
Chart is shown at the gates and is much consulted. 
The Society presented a petition to the Hertfordshire County Council 
which resulted in an order being issued protecting our rarer and beneficial 
birds, the schedule being drawn up by its ornithological members. It 
organised two public meetings, which resulted in Bricket Wood Common 
being preserved as common land in its natural state ; and lately it assisted 
the Watford Field- -path Association, an offshoot of the Society founded by its 
members, in calling a public meeting which was greatly instrumental in fifty 
acres of Cassiobury Park, which had been sold for building-land, being 
secured as a public park for Watford, and entirely so in securing that this 
park is open to the remaining portion of Cassiobury Park instead of being 
surrounded by houses. 
Great economy is exercised in carrying on the Society. There is one paid 
assistant whose salary has recently been reduced from £5 to £3 per annum. 
Authors now have to pay the cost of providing illustrations for their papers, 
and instead of being presented with twenty-five reprints, twenty copies of 
the Transactions are cut up for their use. 
Although the membership has been much reduced during the last twenty, 
and especially during the last ten years, the number of its working naturalists 
and the interest taken by them in its proceedings has increased, and more 
and also better local work has lately been done by them. Much, however, 
remains to be accomplished, especially in the investigation of the lower and 
minuter forms of life, and the value of the annual reports by the various 
Recorders increases as they extend over a greater length of time. This is 
especially the case with meteorological and phenological observations, and 
it would be a matter of great regret if the tables of monthly rainfall could 
no longer be published, or even if there were a break in their continuity. It 
is towards the expense of such costly contributions as these, and of such 
important works as the late Mr. Pryor’s Flora of Hertfordshire and Sir 
George Fordham’s Catalogue of Hertfordshire Maps, that a contribution 
from an oatside source would be most welcome. 
