REPORT 



COUNCIL OF THE RAY SOCIETY, 



Read at the Eleventh Meeting of the Society, held at Liveepool, Sept. 25</(, 185J: ; 

 SIR CHARLES LYELL, F.R.S., in the Chair. 



In presenting their eleventh Report to the Members of the Ray Society, the 

 Council feel that they are not employing mere formal expressions when they state 

 they have reason to congratulate themselves and the Members on the condition and 

 prospects of the Society. For many months, notwithstanding their continued efforts 

 to facilitate the publication of the works of the Society, they have been obliged to 

 defer the issue of the volumes which they had long before hoped to have seen in the 

 hands of the Members. Amongst other causes of delay they would refer to the 

 melancholy death of their late esteemed colleague Mr. H. E. Strickland, who was 

 engaged on the last volume of the ' Bibliography' when the accident which so 

 suddenly terminated his existence occurred. In Mr. Strickland the Ray Society not 

 only lost one of their most laborious contributors, hut one of the most zealous and 

 active members of the Council. 



The illness of Mr. Wing, the artist employed on the illustrations of Messrs. Alder 

 and Hancock's ' Nudibranchiate Mollusca' has been a cause of delay in bringing out 

 the sixth part of that work. 



During the past year, the Council has ordered to be distributed to the Members, 

 for the year 1853, the volume of ' Botanical and Physiological Memoirs.' This work 

 contains a translation of Professor A. Braun on ' Rejuvenescence in Nature,' by 

 Mr. Henfrey ; a Translation of Professor Meneghini on the ' Animal Nature of the 

 Diatomese,' by C. Johnston, Esq., Lancaster, and an abstract of Kohn on the 

 ' Structure and Development of Protococcus pluvialis,' by Mr. Busk. 



In their last Report, the Council stated that the sixth part of Alder and Hancock 

 on the Nudibranchiate Mollusca would be the last. On account of the number of 

 new species discovered by the authors, and the extent of the general introduction 

 to the anatomy and physiology of the Nudibranchiata, it has been found utterly 

 impossible to accomplish the completion of this work in Part VI; the Council have, 



