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President, Sir H. De la Beche; Treasurer, Mr. Searles V. Wood; Secretary, Professor Morris; and Auditors, Messrs. A. G. Melville and J. Tennant. The first list contained 362 subscribers, who have since increased—notwithstanding losses, deaths, &c.—to nearly 500 at the present time, and the amount expended in Monographs during the thirty years of the Society's existence has been £21,200, The plan of publication is similar to that adopted by the Ray Society. Each subscriber of one guinea is entitled to receive a quarto volume, containing from forty to fifty quarto plates and necessary letter-press. It is not found practicable, on account of the comprehensive character of the Monographs, to issue annually one complete work at a time, and consequently as many as six parts of various Monographs have sometimes been included in the volume. These may he collected and bound together subsequently or the series nay he left in chronological order as issued, easy reference being had to any Monograph m particular from the comprehensive indices prepared by the Secretary. In the volume for 1878 there will be eight parts, including two new subjects—the Liassic Ammonites and the Fishes allied to the modern Ceratodus; the completion of an old Monograph—that on the Merostomata; and a particularly interesting treatise on the relation between the Pleistocene mammalia and those of the present historic periods together, the estimated cost being £800. The following are among the more remarkable works published by this society:—The Carboniferous and Crag Foraminifera. the Fossil Corals, the Polyzoa of the Crag, the Echinodermata of the Oolitic and Cretaceous Formations, the Mollusca of the Crag, Eocene, and Great Oolite Strata; the Fossil Brachiopoda, the Fossil Merostomata, the Trilobites, the Belemnites, the Carboniferous Fishes, the Reptilia of the Liassic and Wealden Formations, and the Mammalia of the Mesozoic System, and of the Pleistocene and Crag Formations. The Council state in their last Report that "many years must elapse and many additional writers be enrolled ere the task of figuring the whole of the fossils of the British area be completed."

It has been attempted to be shown within the compass of this necessarily brief account what thorough good work the Ray and Palæontographical Societies are doing to advance the cause of Natural History. From the figures already quoted, it will be seen that an aggregate of more than forty-three thousand pounds, or an average of £1,300 per annum, has been expended by both Societies in little over thirty years, and this, be it remembered, has been purely voluntary, and without any help whatever from Government, but frequently supplemented by considerable pecuniary assistance from the talented authors, to whom the subscribers are indebted for the works themselves. It is evident that, with larger resources, the usefulness of both Societies might be greatly extended. At present, for each guinea subscription, the issue is one volume per annum, which might be increased to two if means justified the respective Councils, and thus the publication of many additional valuable works, some of which have appeared for years in the Prospectus, and then been withdrawn, could be undertaken. It would he a graceful act if every Society in our Union, not on the lists, would subscribe, as well as each working naturalist,