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chief justification that I can offer for accepting the honour- 
able office to which you have appointed me is that at any 
rate I can lay claim to being an interested spectator, follow- 
ing the progress of entomological science as far as my time 
will admit, and only regretting that my own opportunities 
for active work at the subject have reached the vanishing 
stage. 
Without presuming to attempt the impossible task of 
reviewing the entomological literature of the past year, I 
cannot help noting the remarkable literary activity shown 
recently by the entomologists of this country. Our dis- 
tinguished Fellow, Prof. L. C. Miall, has given us, in his 
Natural History of Aquatic Insects," a valuable work, all 
too rare of its kind in this country, dealing with the life- 
histories of certain groups and embodying the results of 
much original observation. The British Lepidopterist 
appears also to have been particularly well catered for lately, 
since, in addition to Mr. Barrett's great work, which is still 
in course of publication, we have a popular work on this 
subject by Mr. Furneaux, published in 1894, a book on the 
British Hawk-Moths, by Mr. Lucas, a'" Handbook of British 
Macro -Lepidoptera," by Mr. B. Gr. Rye, and, finally, 
Mr. Meyrick's " Handbook of British Lepidoptera," of which 
it is not too much to say that, from the systematic point of 
view, it is the most scientific work on our Lepidoptera that 
has appeared since the famihar "Manual" of Stainton. 
Then, as especially affecting the subjects dealt Avith by this 
Society, the fifth volume of the Cambridge Natural History, 
treating of Peripatus by Mr. Adam Sedgwick, Myriapods by 
Mr. F. G. Sinclair, and Insects by our former President, 
Dr. Sharp, has recently been published. The authors of this 
volume are certainly to be congratulated on having furnished 
such a valuable contribution to our literature. When its 
successor appears, and I will venture to express the hope 
that this will be at no very distant period, we shall be in 
possession of a treatise on the natural history of insects 
which, from the point of view of the general reader, will 
compare most favourably with any similar work that has 
been published in the English language. Another addition 
