1874-5.

D Marples & Co., Limited (Printing).

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PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

LIVERPOOL

LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

ANNUAL MEETING.-SIXTY-FIFTH SESSION.

ROYAL INSTITUTION, October 4th, 1875.

JAMES ALLANSON PICTON, F.S.A., PRESIDENT, in the Chair.

Mr. ALBERT JULIUS MOTT, the retiring President, occupied the Chair during that portion of the evening devoted to the usual business of the Annual Meeting.

The Minutes of the concluding Meeting of the previous Session were read and signed, after which the Honorary Secretary read the following

REPORT.

The prosperous condition of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool has undergone no material change during the past twelve months. At the commencement of the Session the number of ordinary members was two hundred and twenty. To these were added, by election, thirty others; but the deaths of four members, and the resignations of fifteen, the majority of whom left the neighbourhood, have diminished this accession, and the Society now musters two hundred and thirty-one ordinary members on its roll.

Of the four gentlemen deceased, Mr. W. J. Lamport, to whose memory the Society paid an appropriate tribute when recording his death in the minutes, had been a member for twenty-six years. Mr. Roger Lyon Jones had been on the roll for twenty-three years; and Mr. Jas. Fitzherbert Brockholes for nineteen years. At one time, Mr. Brockholes took an active part in the proceedings of the Society; and the results of his observations on the Entomology and Ornithology of the Cheshire district were frequently brought before the notice of the members. Four of his contributions on these subjects will be found in the eleventh, twelfth, fourteenth, and eighteenth volumes of the Society's Proceedings, one of them being an elaborate list of the Lepidoptera of the Hundred of Wirral. Nearly all the gentlemen who resigned were elected in recent years. Two of them,

however, have been transferred to the list of Corresponding Members, for reasons which will be stated presently; and of the remainder, three gentlemen, namely, Mr. H. H. Statham, the Rev. W. H. Dallinger, and the Rev. W. A: Whitworth, M.A., have left behind them substantial evidence of their connection with the Society, in the form of valuable contributions to its volumes of Proceedings.

The death of Dr. J. E. Gray, F.R.S., keeper of the Zoological Collection in the British Museum, has reduced the number of Honorary Members to forty; and the list of Corresponding Members has been extended to fourteen by the election of three gentlemen, two of whom, as just stated, were previously Ordinary Members. Dr. Millen Coughtrey and. Mr. Robert Gordon, the gentlemen referred to, had both contributed to the Society's Proceedings, the former by various communications on Comparative Anatomy, and the latter in particular by his translation of the inscription on the Burmese bell in the Free Museum. It was considered, therefore, that their removal abroad, and their appointment

to public positions which would give them facilities for still rendering good service to literature and science, was a fitting opportunity, not only of recognising their efforts on behalf of the Society, but of securing their continued interest in its labours, by recommending them for election as Corresponding Members.

The third of the newly-elected Corresponding Members is Mr. Edwin C. Reed, of the National Museum, Santiago, from whom an interesting communication on the habitat of the Vicuna was received in April last. This and other communications from Corresponding Members, received at the same time, will be found in the Society's forthcoming volume of Proceedings.

While the Council is thus able to point with satisfaction. to the good work done by many among this class of the members, it is also glad to report that the Associates, the number of whom remains unaltered, are equally zealous in the collection of specimens, and in the acquisition of valuable information relative to the natural history of the marine fauna.

The Papers which were read at the meetings of the past Session were of considerable interest. The volume containing them has passed through the Press, and will shortly be ready for distribution.

During the last twelve months, the Library has received many valuable donations, among which may be named-A complete series of the Indian Geological Survey; the publications of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which include the Revision of the Echini, by our recently-elected Honorary Member, Alexander Agassiz; and a full set of the Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers, London, from 1860 to 1875.

The receipt of these works, in addition to the usual donations, together with the completion of the series of many