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PRESIDENT'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



Delivered September 25th, 1885. 



By A. D. Michael, F.L.S., F.R.M.S. 



It is, I believe, the time-honoured custom in this Club for the 

 President to deliver some kind of introductory address on the 

 occasion of his taking the chair for the first time ; and, even were 

 it not a custom, his own inclinations would naturally prompt him to 

 make some reference to the new circumstances in which he found 

 himself placed. It is with feelings of a very pleasant kind that I 

 enter on the duties of the office to which you have called me, 

 because it is an assurance of the friendship and goodwill which my 

 fellow-members of the Club have always shown towards me, and 

 also, in a far higher degree, because I regard it as indicating that, 

 in your judgment, I am more likely to be of service to the Club, as 

 its President, than any other gentleman who is for the moment 

 available ; had this not been your opinion you would not have 

 allowed feelings of friendship to have led you to select me. It is 

 naturally a source of great gratification to me that I should have 

 your friendship and your favourable opinion, still I am well aware 

 that there are many members in the Club of older standing and 

 greater attainments than myself; nevertheless, I feel assured that 

 you have done your duty, and it now remains for me to do mine. 



It is, I think, needless for me to say that I will, as President, do 

 my best for the Society, because I trust you will believe, without 

 any assurance from me, that I shall in the future, as I did in the 

 past, endeavour to do the best I can for the interests of the 

 Society, whatever position I may occupy in it. I confess to feeling 

 some diffidence in taking the chair in succession to such a President 

 as Dr. Carpenter, who, during his long and laborious life, had 

 acquired a very wide range of experience, and had attained to an 

 extent and variety of knowledge such as I cannot myself hope to 

 emulate. It is only to few that opportunities are given of acquir- 

 ing so wide a range of information, and fewer still that possess the 

 ability to retain in their minds what has thus been gathered, and 

 to speak promptly and efficiently upon almost any biological subject 



Journ. Q. M. C, Series II., No. 14. s 



