CENTRALISING SCIENTIFIC PERIODICALS 409 
while to meet the ensuing expenses of reform, whether in 
publications or keep of library, MSS., and collections, £1000 
was promptly raised among the Fellows, which ' showed the 
vitality there was in the old trunk.' 
The position of the Society was still further improved 
in 1856. A great stir had been made ' to get Govt, to 
give us Bm'lington House as a site for the five chartered 
Societies who promote abstract Science.' Now the Treasury 
granted the Linnean apartments in Burlington House, whither 
the Royal and the Chemical went also, while the Geological 
and Astronomical refused to move from Somerset House. 
Now that the Linnean was placed in juxtaposition with 
the Royal and on an equal footing as regards position and all 
other outward matters, it only needed a little active aid from 
its members to raise it to its former position, and Hooker 
was indefatigable in stirring up his fellow botanists to contri- 
bute papers. As he wrote to Harvey (November 1856) : 
I have always considered that the service it rendered to 
science between 1790 and 1830, by purchasing the Linnsean 
collections at its own cost (for £3000), and by publishing 
gratis to its fellows 20 quarto illustrated volumes of important 
matter that could never else have seen light, were claims 
enough upon every man of science to support it. 
But the resuscitation of the Linnean Society was only a 
step towards a larger scientific object. This was to induce 
Naturalists to concentrate their publications into well-estab- 
lished periodicals and if possible to check the indiscriminate 
scattering of their papers in numerous journals, many of 
which were virtually locked to science. It was a most serious 
evil, and he adds roundly, ' The number of badly edited and 
badly supported journals is quite incredible, and the present 
practice of cramming Zoological and Botanical researches 
into one periodical increases the evil many-fold.' Not that 
the reformers had any intention of interfering with the pro- 
vincial societies or Natural History journals, albeit true of 
some that vehement exertions whip them into a spirited 
beginning, only to fall away soon and remain burthens upon 
