CXxXX ANNIVERSARY MEETING. 
&e., have still their respective admirers. Among so many systems 
it may perhaps be difficult to select the best ; the object of the Com- 
mittee, however, in making these iapeewabiene has been, not so much 
to determine the respective value of the several authorities, as to guard 
against the capricious adoption of any or of all. If there be any 
settled plan of classification at the British Museum, it might be well 
perhaps to transfer it to the collection of the Society. The Professor 
of Mineralogy at Cambridge however would be the person to whom 
the Council would naturally look for the best information upon this 
subject. 
Fossil Bones. Osteological Collection. 
There are numerous specimens of these in the Museum, but they 
are not brought together, catalogued, numbered, classed or named. 
The only occasion on which the Council has interfered on this subject 
was when they directed that they should be classed according to the 
arts. 
The bones from the Himalaya, of which several cases were presented, 
were, from the inability of the Society to accommodate them, trans- 
ferred, with the approbation of Government, to the British Museum, 
and have been there examined and arranged by Messrs. Falconer and 
Cautley. 
The Himalaya bones in the crypts have been looked over by Dr. 
Falconer : the completion of his investigations at the British Museum 
was transferred when he quitted England to Mr. Melville; but there 
still remain numerous specimens from this locality, some im boxes, 
some on the floor, some in the open area. 
Your Committee are desirous that the Council should come to an 
early determination as to the expediency of mamtaining these large 
collections of bones, and express an opinion as to the limits within 
which such collections ought to be confined. 
A Catalogue and Index are much wanted of the several skeletons 
or parts of skeletons, which on account of their size cannot be placed 
in the drawers, and are therefore dispersed in the entrance-hall, the 
anteroom on the ground-floor, the staircase in the library, and the 
upper and lower museum; as also of the large casts (some of them 
presented by Cuvier), which for the same reason have undergone a 
similar dispersion. 
Collection of Recent Shells. 
This cabinet, founded on a resolution of Council in 1818, has hi- 
therto engaged but little attention: the first notice to be found in its 
annual reports bears date 1830; it is noticed also in the annual re- 
port of 1842. Its groundwork is a collection bequeathed to the So- 
ciety by Captain Apsley, whose zeal in the early days of the Society 
deserves even at this late period honourable notice. 
G. B. GREENOUGH. 
Jno. Morris. 
Cua. LYELL. 
Bon 
