Yol. 68.] ANNIVEKSARY ADDEESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixxi 



interest to the reports which will be issued when, the collections 

 have been completely overhauled. 



The Society may rest assured that it has acted with wisdom in 

 allowing the contents of its Museum to become in this way more 

 readily accessible than before to its own Pellows, and to other 

 investigators and enquirers ; and it may feel that it has in this 

 way done more to carry out the wishes of the donors of specimens, 

 than would have been the case if it had continued to store the 

 <}pllections in its own premises. At the same time, the Fellows may 

 congratulate themselves upon the fact that the Society has thus 

 secured in the most advantageous way facilities for bringing one 

 of its greatest assets, the Library, into a state of higher perfection 

 and efficiency than has ever hitherto been possible. 



Now more than ever must the Library be a special care of the 

 Society. Already we receive by gift, exchange, or purchase, the 

 ehief British and Foreign Geological Periodicals, the publications 

 of Academies and Learned Societies, and a large proportion of 

 separately published works ; but there are still many gaps in all 

 these classes which ought to be filled, if the Library is to retain 

 and improve the position that it has acquired. 



The present ordinary income of the Society will not allow of the 

 expenditure of a much larger sura than is at present devoted to 

 books and periodicals. There seem to be few opportunities of 

 retrenchment on current expenditure. The sum annually 

 devoted to the printing of the Quarterly Journal would appear to 

 be just sufficient for its needs : it is large enough to enable us to 

 print a considerable number of important papers (many of them 

 of great length) eacli year, a number which seems to correspond 

 approximately with the annual output of such papers as should 

 naturally be read at our meetings : on the other hand, the sum is 

 sufficiently restricted to compel a careful scrutiny of each paper 

 submitted and the relegation of some of them to Local Societies, or 

 other Bodies, to whose publications they are more appropriate than 

 to the pages of our own Journal. Improvements in the illustrations, 

 and an increase in their number, would in some cases appear to 

 be desirable, but perhaps this is rather a question of securing 

 a more effective class of black and white work than of a larger 

 outlay. 



It would certainly appear inadvisable either to curtail or to 

 increase our expenditure on such publications as our * Proceedings * 

 or the ' Geological Literature.' Some saving will be effected when 



