4 TEANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



union among our biological societies ; and closer inter- 

 course among their workers. In the days when no 

 relationships were recognised between different groups of 

 living things, the union of societies cultivating different 

 branches of Science might appear of little moment ; but, 

 as is now fully recognised, no branch is independent, the 

 greatest possible benefit must accrue from the more 

 intimate union of our various societies. 



Much money now spent in machinery, libraries, and 

 publications by our separate societies if funded together 

 would be saved, to be spent on profitable original research 

 and the publication of these results and of new facts 

 and observations, which would command the attention of 

 the scientific world. The valuable investigations of some 

 of our smaller societies are lost to a great extent by being 

 either not published, or buried in small Proceedings, 

 which fail to obtain wide dissemination. Some of our 

 societies again spend Jarge sums in printing papers, which 

 in being often condensations of other men's work, and 

 not original contributions to knowledge, though excellent 

 as a means of diffusing knowledge when read before the 

 society, do not call for publication ; indeed they un- 

 doubtedly reduce the value of the Proceedings in which 

 they are re-produced by increasing the price of the volume, 

 and thereby limiting its dissemination, if not even dis- 

 crediting that society's publications, so much that their 

 volumes are rarely consulted. In other societies where 

 the funds are small, the communications of the members 

 have to be contributed to metropolitan or other journals. 

 The want of amalgamation — this working as units — and 

 the want of organisation, is the cause of so much less 

 being accomplished than might be done. 



I cannot help expressing how great a disappointment 

 to many of us it was that the negotiations last vear for our 



