Maybe lapply(l,function(x){x[1,1]}) or unlist(lapply(l,function(x){x[1,1]})) does what you want? Benno Am 17.Nov.2010 um 15:01 schrieb soeren.vogel at eawag.ch: > m <- matrix(1:9, nrow=3, dimnames=list(LETTERS[1:3], letters[1:3])) > l <- list(m1=m, m2=m*2, m3=m*3) > l[[3]] # works > l[[3]][1:2, ] # works > l[[1:3]][1, 1] # does not work