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 bound 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 d Buffon. 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 ^ 
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, 
liossi, &c. Many most valuable monographs and treatises upon special 
groups of Coleoptera have also been executed, such as Dejean's Carahidoe^ 
Aube's Hydrocantharidce, Erichson's Staphylinidce, Burmeister's XameZ- 
licornes^ Schonherr's Curculionidce, and a host of others. To attempt to 
lick these into shape — to throw them all into one common systematic 
