262 
PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
read of the proceedings of the Society for the last, and officers elected 
for the ensuing year ; after which the President proceeded to deliver 
the following address : 
It affords me, I can assure you, the greatest pleasure to address 
you this evening as your President. Since I joined this Society in 
1872, shortly after it had been formed, I have witnessed its development 
with the liveliest satisfaction. We formerly met in a small room at 
Brockley, and on many occasions no greater number of members were 
present at our meetings than four or five, including our President, 
Mr. Jenner Weir. A tribute to his administration cannot be out of 
place here, for it was mainly due to his untiring zeal and constant 
attendance that we were kept together at that time. Ominous threat- 
enings of dissolution were somehow quelled, and good feeling and 
hope restored by his patience and forbearance. Since that time our 
members have gradually, but surely, increased. Starting with fifteen or 
twenty, we now number sixty-six. Many important alterations have 
been made in our constitution, notably the admission of ladies to some 
of our meetings, and the introduction of soirees, which, if not always 
purely scientific in their result, yet make a most charming break in the 
session, and afford a really intellectual and social evening to our mem- 
bers and our friends. The tone of our papers has become more prac- 
tical, I fancy ; and this I am pleased to see, for we are as yet too young 
in nature’s mysteries to theorize much ; and theory should be as far as 
possible deprecated until we are more practised. Our present position 
with respect to the admission of ladies, although a step in the right 
direction, appears to me, nevertheless, somewhat incongruous, for, in 
these days of medical women, and while so many are striving for the 
advancement and better education of women as a class, I see no reason 
why they should be denied admission to many of the learned societies. 
We admitted them on what are termed “ special evenings” — as it were 
on sufferance — but reserved to ourselves the right to exclude them on 
certain other evenings. This is so far right, possibly, because they 
are not members. But why restrict them from becoming members if 
they so desire it ? I am committing no breach of confidence, I trust, 
if I say that on more than one occasion in this room I have heard that 
desire expressed. That women are able to work well with the micro- 
scope, can grasp scientific facts, are careful manipulators, and in 
every way fitted for the study of botany and natural history, will not, 
I am sure, be denied. There are a few other matters to which I wish 
to direct your attention this evening, and first and foremost amongst 
these is the formation of a library for the use of members. Without 
books the student in natural history can do very little ; he is apt to 
drift into a mere collector, or may fall into another extreme, and, 
fancying many things he collects are new and undescribed, will 
trouble himself little or nothing about the habits or peculiarities of 
species, merely collecting for the love of collecting. There have been 
two or three suggestions made with regard to a library. One — and a 
very good one — is, that members should lend books to the Society for 
a term ; that the books should be kept in a box at the Society’s room ; 
