ANNUAL MEETING. 



January 25, 1888. 



Professor W. J. Stephens, F.G.S., in the Chair. 



President's Address. 



The historians of Australia, whoever from time to time may 

 claim or deserve the title, will always refer to the year which has 

 now closed as an epoch in their records. To our own eyes indeed 

 it may for the moment wear a different complexion. Our attention 

 is distracted from the real significance of the period by a multi- 

 plicity of fantastic and ridiculous schemes for celebrating an occa- 

 sion so suggestive of ironical felicitations. And though I wiite 

 these words before the actual completion of the century, and 

 therefore rather with dismal forebodings than with the still more 

 depressing experience of the festivities and jubilations which are 

 already resounding in our ears, and threatening a period of universal 

 indigestion and despondency, I cannot pretend to think our mode 

 of celebration very sensible or very dignified. Those are 

 empty (though doubtless sincere) compliments that are paid to 

 " our noble selves." 



And a philosopher may without difiiculty demonstrate that a date 

 is not a stage, that there is no beginning and no end to a period, that 

 growth is imperceptible and not marked by astronomical measures, 

 and so forth. But after all there is a great deal of human 

 nature in the philosopher, who is found to keep Birthdays and Wed- 

 ding days and New Year's Days ; yes, and bank holidays, even 

 though they fall on dates of so uncertain a character as Good 



