120 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



of operations, a more useful, in so far as a more complete? 

 review might be given. In this Society, although we are 

 all hound by a common bond of union, and all feel an in- 

 terest in every one of the departments of science which are 

 treated of here, we are not equally proficient in them alL 

 Each has usually some particular branch of our common study 

 in which he feels a greater interest than in the rest. Each 

 has made greater progress in the knowledge of some one 

 special department ; and without in any way depreciating the 

 extent and the value of his general knowledge of the whole, 

 each is undoubtedly better qualified to give a review or sum- 

 mary of the progress of that branch with which he is him- 

 self most familiar. It has been suggested to me, then, that if 

 those of our Presidents who in their address should wish to 

 cast a retrospective glance over the progress of science were 

 to confine themselves to a report upon the branch with which 

 they are most familiar, we should in the course of a few years 

 have a series of summaries which might be really practically 

 useful to the student — at all events, more so than any merely 

 general retrospects could possibly be. In my present address 

 I propose to act upon this principle ; and taking that branch of 

 science, Entomology, which is my favourite department, and 

 that branch of it (Coleoptera) which I specially affect, I shall 

 endeavour to lay before you a view of what has recently been 

 done in this science, both at home and abroad : — 



Beginning with the works on systematic entomology published during 

 the last three years or so, facile princeps, whether in extent and import- 

 ance of subject, or in the mode in which it is executed, stands Lacordaire's 

 Histoire des Genres des Coleoptires, — a work now in course of being pub- 

 lished as one of the Suites a Bujfon. For a long series of years, ever 

 since the days of Fabricius, Latreille, Olivier, &c, when the whole number 

 of insects known did not exceed many hundreds, down to the present 

 day, when 100,000 species but faintly represent the number actually known 

 (there are 90,000 species of insects of all orders in the Berlin Museum), en- 

 tomology has been going on constantly increasing, without any systematic 

 work or general treatise upon it having been executed. An enormous 

 number of species have been separately described in transactions ar a 

 periodicals ; numerous combined descriptions of new species peculiar to 

 individual districts have been published ; and also a number of local 

 faunas, such as those of Erichson, Stephens, Redtenbacher, Mulsant, Heer, 

 Rossi, &c. Many most valuable monographs and treatises upon special 

 groups of Coleoptera have also been executed, such as Dejean's Garabid(je i 

 Aube's Hydrocantharidce, Erichson's Staphylinidce, Burmeister'sZameZ- 

 licomes, Schonherr's Curculionidce, and a host of others. To attempt to 

 lick these into shape — to throw them all into one common systematic 



