4 
REPORT OF 
Whilst these feelings operate on the casual visitor, the 
members of the Society also are more assiduous in bestow- 
ing gifts upon an establishment which displays them to so 
much advantage^ Spacious accommodations are not with¬ 
out a powerful effect in inviting contributions. No man is 
pleased to find that his donations have been consigned to 
obscurity. Nor is this a mortification only to an idle vanity; 
but the donor who is influenced by higher motives may 
justly expect that what he bestows from a principle of 
public spirit, shall be applied effectively to the public 
advantage. And thus a perfect system of exhibition, how¬ 
ever costly, compensates its expenses by its fruits; and 
those scientific arrangements and elaborate catalogues which 
the Keeper of the Museum is employed in making, to inter¬ 
pret its contents, will be found to avail equally in ren¬ 
dering it at the same time popular and instructive. 
The most strikino; tribute which has been offered to the 
Society’s enlarged means of exhibition, is the donation which 
the Curator of Entomology ^ has made of his whole private 
collection of British Insects. Fifteen hundred specimens 
in excellent preservation have thus been added to the means 
already provided for studying these minute productions 
of nature. It is not often that a collection of so much 
interest is given away by the hand which formed it ; and 
in the sacrifice of these valuable fruits of a long cherished 
pursuit to a public repository, the Meeting will not fail to 
recognize a proof not only of the uncommon liberality of the 
donor, but of the high estimation in which the Museum is held. 
iTh<>iiias Backhouse, Esq. 
