1 88s.] 
The Palaonto graphical Society . 
595 
VII. THE PAL^EONTOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 
By W. Jerome Harrison, F.G.S. 
& MONG the Scientific Societies of Great Britain the 
Palceonto graphical must be assigned the first position, 
if we consider the results obtained in proportion to 
the amount of money expended. This Society was esta- 
blished in 1847 “ for the purpose of figuring and describing 
the whole of the British fossils.” No entrance-fee has to 
be paid, and there is no form of election to be gone through, 
but “ each person subscribing one guinea is considered a 
member of the Society, and is entitled to the volume issued 
for the year to which the subscription relates. The thirty- 
six volumes that have been published contain an amount of 
geological information which may be in some degree realised 
from the statement that they include more than 10,000 large 
quarto pages of letterpress, in which 5019 species of fossils, 
including representatives of almost every division of the 
animal and vegetable kingdoms, have been described. 
But a description of a fossil in words only is, as a rule, 
insufficient to a thorough comprehension of its nature and 
appearance ; accordingly these volumes are illustrated by 
1467 large plates, on which are 26,260 figures, executed in a 
style which may fairly be described as unsurpassed, if not 
unequalled. 
It might have been thought that such a great undertaking 
as this should have been a matter for the Government to 
carry out, its execution being entrusted say to the Geological 
Survey, conjointly perhaps with the British Museum. But 
that is not how we do things in England ; and let us be 
thankful that it was not so, or we should have suffered from 
the long delays, poor printing, and high prices which have 
characterised the publication of the Memoirs and Maps of 
the Geological Survey. 
The thirty-sixth volume of the Palseontographical Society, 
just published, opens with a list of the 494 members be- 
longing to the Society, by whose annual subscription of one 
guinea the expenses of its ’ publication are defrayed. The 
first impression of any reader must be that the volume is by 
far the cheapest scientific publication he ever took into his 
hands ; for the paper and printing are of the best, the writers 
