MAY 7 J90,, 



PREFACE 



TO THE 



NEW SERIES OF TRANSACTIONS. 



In introducing a new series of the Transactions, it may be 

 of service to notice briefly the several preceding series that 

 have been published by the Natural History Society and the 

 Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club. 



The Natural History Society was founded as an offshoot 

 from the Literary and Philosophical Society in 1829, and 

 published between that date and 1838 two quarto volumes 

 of transactions. The issue of transactions then ceased, 

 though annual reports were regularly printed and published. 

 The Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club, inaugurated in 1846, 

 took up the work of publishing papers relating to local 

 natural history, and issued six volumes of transactions 

 covering the period from 1846 to 1864. The Field Club and 

 the Natural History Society then agreed to unite in publishing 

 a joint series under the title of the " Natural History Trans- 

 actions of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-upon- 

 Tyne"; and from 1864 up to the present time (1903) this has 

 formed the medium for publishing the papers and reports of 

 both bodies. Fourteen volumes have been issued in this 

 joint series, and a fifteenth, consisting of the second part 

 (Microlepidoptera) of Mr. J. E. Robson's catalogue of the 

 local butterflies and moths, still remains to be added as the 

 first part of the present series is going to the press. 



The occasion which has rendered desirable the starting of 

 a new series is the recent decision of the Tyneside Naturalists' 

 Field Club to amalgamate with the Natural History Society. 

 In consequence of this, the auspices under which the trans- 

 actions are issued are somewhat changed ; and the series 

 now entered upon bears once more the title of the earliest 

 of its predecessors, namely, the " Transactions of the Natural 

 History Society of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle- 

 upon-Tyne," 



