PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 5 



union with the Microscopical Society should have fallen 

 through. I am still hopeful that the union between us is 

 but delayed for a short period. That the Entomological 

 Society, and the Naturalists' Field Club should be part and 

 parcel of a Biological Society, aiding and deriving benefit 

 from the union, there is, I am sure, no doubt either among 

 them or among us. The. Palaeontologists are biologists ; 

 we could therefore find close bonds of union with the 

 Geological Society, the Geologists' Association, and the 

 Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. As expoun- 

 ders of- the ways and habits of the highest of the Primates, 

 that Society can find its whole aims included in a Biological 

 Society. Such an union of Biological Societies might 

 receive the name of the Liverpool Biological Institute, and 

 its volume of Proceedings might be arranged as is done at 

 present by the New Zealand Institute. This, the great 

 scientific society of that colony, consists of numerous 

 " Philosophical Societies " meeting in far distant centres 

 all over the colony, Dunedin, Christchurch, Nelson, Wel- 

 lington and elsewhere. The subscriptions go to a central 

 fund in Wellington, whither the various papers are sent, and 

 after passing an editorial committee, are published in one 

 yearly volume under their different subjects, zoology and 

 anthropology, botany, geology, and miscellaneous or liter- 

 ary subjects each together. It is possible in this way to 

 publish fully, and illustrate adequately, the various papers 

 contributed to science in that colony. Some such scheme 

 seems to me of urgent importance at the present time in 

 Liverpool to economise our resources, to save reduplica- 

 tion of our scientific labours, and obtain for them adequate 

 dissemination and recognition and the object of these 

 disjointed inaugural observations is, if possible, to urge this 

 much needed coalition of our forces into a powerful and 

 influential society, which would exercise a predominent 

 influence on Biological Science in Liverpool. 



