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at any rate I fear it will be some time before tbe Council is able to 
vote any grant from tbe general fund, to tbe assistance of tbe special 
publication fund. Are our members doing all that they possibly can 
to make known the aims and claims of the Society amongst their 
naturalist friends ? We have recently made some acquisitions to our 
membership whereof we are proud, and we are still able to rejoice in 
the presence amongst us of several old and valued friends; but I have 
to remind you, with profound regret, that our ranks have been thinned 
by death, two of our very promising members having been removed 
from us during the year ; I allude to Mr. W. G. Pearce and Mr. E. 
Heasler—both of them men whom we felt that we could ill afford to 
lose. 
I have to thank you for the support which you have given me in 
carrying out my intentions indicated at our last Annual Meeting as to 
the general conduct of the Society ; I think we may flatter ourselves 
that there is some improvement in punctuality and attention, but we 
must not relax our vigilance, or think that we have attained perfection 
in these respects. Our discussions have been on the whole Avell taken 
up, but perhaps they were hardly so fruitful as definite papers would 
have been, and I am glad to find that you have shown yourselves 
willing to co-operate with our Secretaries in their arrangements for a 
series of papers during the present winter session. Many and 
interesting have been our exhibits, and the night of Karymm ( Culias) 
may be mentioned as a special success. It has been suggested to me 
by more than one of our members that we might profitably have a 
little more system and pre-arrangement with regard to our exhibits, 
not of course to the exclusion of others, hut as a nucleus, and to 
ensure opportunities for comparison of material in critical species. I 
am very ready to give this plan a trial, as it promises to stimulate 
interest in our meetings and to yield good results. I shall therefore 
as often as possible announce some group of allied species in which 
exhibits are invited for the following meeting ; and with this end in 
view I shall welcome suggestions as regards species suitable for this 
purpose, or those in which any of our members are particularly anxious 
to see and study accumulated material. I hope our coleopterists will 
not leave this branch of our work entirely in the hands of the 
lepidopterists, but will propose some groups which they think they 
could appropriately treat in the same way. 
Any other suggestion which members may have to offer on this or 
any other branch of our work will, I can asssureyou, be most carefully 
considered by myself or by the Council ; let us avoid anything like 
stagnation, and whilst conserving what is essential to the well-being 
of the Society, let us be radical in uprooting the sources of failure and 
the hindrances to our progress, so that the new century may see the 
“ City of London Entomological and Natural History ” moving 
forward with new hopes and new strength, to new achievements in the 
branches of work to which it has for so many years devoted its 
energies. 
