4 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 



Jt is pniposed to holil triennial meetings, anil there is a pussiliility of the 

 next meeting- being held in Wellington, N.Z. Australia had six representatives 

 at the Ilonululu meeting, four of them — Dr. L. A. Cotton, Messrs. E. C. Andrews, 

 C. Hedley and C. A. Sussmilch — Ijeiug Members of this Society, the other two 

 being Professors F . Wood- Jones, of Adelaide, and H . C. Richards, of Brisbane. 



The fifteenth meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, the fii-st since 1913 — no meeting having been held during the War — 

 was to have been held in Hobait in .January. As a result of the dislocation of 

 shipping by strikes, a change of plans became necessary at the last minute, and 

 the meeting wiis held in Melbourne. Despite the short notice and the unfavour- 

 able conditions resulting from the strike the meeting was a highly successful one. 



Many important and interesting discussions took place both on the papers 

 presented and on special subjects. One very urgent matter brought forward, a 

 subject in which this Society is especially interested, was the need for some 

 organisation to provide for the systematic working out of our fauna and flora, 

 more particularly those sections of it which are being rapidly exterminated. The 

 Biology Section recommended the fonnation of an Inter-State Committee com- 

 posed of representatives of all the various Societies concerned with the study 

 of natural history and the preservation of our flora and fauna, whose duty it 

 would be to organise, each in its own State or locality, the carrying out of special 

 investigations. Sir Baldwin SjX'ncer luis further called attention to the urgency 

 of this subject in the Victorian Naturalist for Febniary, 1921, pp. 120-122. Re- 

 feiTing more particularly to the land and fresh-water fauna, he says (pp. 120-1) : 

 — "Settlement and bush-fires are interfering disastrously with the land and fresh- 

 water fauna, and yet it is perhaps the most interesting in any part of the world. 

 Important as is the study of the marine fauna, we must, from a scientific point 

 of view, realize very clearly the fact that this will evei- be with us, and we can 

 investigate it at our leisure; but the land and fresh-water fauna is disappearing 

 rapidly, and unless we now make an organised effort it will be too late to study it 

 effectually, and future generations will wonder what manner of people we were not 

 to leave behind us some ade(|uate record of the marvellously interesting forms of 

 jininial life which we had succeeded in exterminating." 



We cannot but admit the seriousness of the position from the scientific point 

 of view, and it behoves us, not only as a Society, but .i.s individuals interested in 

 Natural History, to do all in oni- ))iiwer to assist such a movement as that pro- 

 j)osed . 



Tlie magnificent be(|uest of the late Sii' Sanuiel McCaughey to the Univei'sity 

 of Sydney has allowed, amongst other things, the establishment of a number of 

 additional Chairs and Lectureshi))s. Of these we are particularly interested in the 

 appointment of an Associate Professor of Geography and of a Lecturei- in Ento- 

 mology. Geography is one of the subjects in which a Linnean Macleay Fellow- 

 ship may be awarded, and there is little doubt that under the guidance of Pro- 

 fessor Griffith Taylor, himself a man of distinguished researches in his subject, 

 there will spring up a school of students eager for the opportunity of conduct- 

 ing research in this rather neglected br.inch of science in Australia. Our little 

 hand of enthusi.ostic workers in Entomology has accomplished work of a high 

 standard in the past, but with the field so wide and the workers so few the diffi- 

 culties have been great. We tlie«'fore heartily welcome the prospect of an op- 

 portunity being provided by which students may obtain a systematic training in 

 the subject, and look foi-ward to notable developments in this very import.int 



