Eleventh Annual Meeting. 363 



Election of Officers. — The following officers for the year were elected : 

 President — Professor C. Chilton ; Hon. Treasurer — Mr. C. A. Ewen ; Hon. 

 Editor — Professor C. Chilton; Ho)t. Librarian — -Dr. J. Allan Thomson. 

 Publication Committee — -Professors Benham, Chilton, Fa it, and Messrs. 

 Speight and Thomson. Secretary — -Mr. B. C. Aston. Hector Aivard Com- 

 mittee for 1915 — -Professor E. W. Skeats (Melbourne), convener ; Professor 

 David (Sydney) ; and Mr. W. Houchin (Adelaide). Hutton Award Com- 

 mittee — Professor Benham (Dunedin), convener; Dr. Cockayne; and 

 Professor David (Sydney). 



Secretary's Salary. — It was resolved that the Secretary's salary for the 

 year be £50. 



Votes of Thanks. — Hearty votes of thanks to the Hon. Editors and to 

 the Hon. Treasurer were carried unanimously. 



Chas. Chilton, Chairman. 

 Confirmed. 

 31st January, 1914. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



The following is the presidential address delivered at the annual meeting 

 of the Board of Governors of the New Zealand Institute, at Wellington, 

 on the 30th January, 1914, by Charles Chilton, MA., D.Sc, LL.D., F.L.S., 

 Professor of Biology, Canterbury College : — ■ " 



Gentlemen of the Board of Governors of the New Zealand Institute, — At 

 your last annual meeting you were good enough to elect me, in my absence, to be your 

 President for the year, and my first duty is now to thank you most sincerely for the 

 great honour you thus conferred upon me. By custom, now well established, the posi- 

 tion carries with it the duty of presenting to you some address on the work of the 

 Institute during the year, and of other scientific matters in which the Institute is directly 

 interested. 



Since our last meeting, Augustus Hamilton, Director of the Dominion Museum, 

 who has been a member since the Board was reconstituted in 1903, and who has acted 

 throughout as our Librarian and has also held the offices of President and Editor, has 

 been removed by death. As a collector, an explorer, and a bibliographer he has made 

 a name for himself, and has rendered most valuable service to the cause of New Zealand 

 science ; while by his researches and publications on Maori ethnology, particularly by 

 his splendid volumes on " Maori Art," he established a reputation as the chief authority 

 on that department of science, and has preserved for all time some of the most valuable 

 memorials of our Native race, which but for his industry and enthusiasm might have 

 been lost for ever. We shall miss his advice at our meeting, and the Institute will be 

 the poorer for the want of his ripe judgment and wide experience. An appreciation of 

 his labours will naturally find a place in the next volume of our Transactions, and it is 

 gratifying to know that a movement has already been made for the erection of some 

 permanent memorial to remind our successors of his life and work. 



In the list of our honorary members the losses by death have this year been un- 

 usually numerous : Lord Avebury, John Milne, P. L. Sclater, Sir George Darwin, and 

 Alfred Russel Wallace, all of them men prominent in science. The mention of Alfred 

 Russel Wallace, especially well known and honoured by New-Zealanders for his researches 

 in connection with the origin of our fauna and flora, takes us back to the publication of 

 the theory of Natural Selection by Darwin and Wallace in 1858, and reminds us of 

 the vast amount of work in zoology and botany during the latter half of the nineteenth 

 century that resulted from the stimulus of that discovery, and of its still more important 

 influences in other fields of thought and activity. 



