b PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



25th, 1875, as reported on pp. 1-13 of the first volume of the 

 Proceedings. For this deficiency there are at least two reasons. 

 In the first place, of the four gentlemen who were most intimately 

 connected with the formation of the Society, Sir William Macleay 

 was the last survivor. And in the second place, the absolute des- 

 truction of the Society's early ofiicial records in the disastrous 

 Garden Palace fire, in the year 1 882, once and forever closed up this 

 source of information. Under these circumstances you will be 

 pleased to hear that Sir William Macleay's own notes on the 

 Society's earliest history have quite recently come to light, and 

 that, very appropriately, I am able to present them to your 

 notice on the present occasion. It is also possible to indicate more 

 clearly than heretofore some of the circumstances which almost 

 certainly helped to lead him to identif}^ himself so readily and so 

 closely with the projected new Society just when he did. 



The records of the Entomological Society of New South Wales 

 seem to have shared the lamentable fate of the Linnean Society's 

 early records. No trace of them was ever found among Sir 

 William's papers and books after his death; and it seems reason- 

 able to suppose that they were handed over to this Society and 

 kept with its own records. 



The last paper in the second and last volume of the Transac- 

 tions of the Entomological Society of New South Wales is marked 

 "Read 7th July, 1873," from which it would appear that no 

 meetings were held after this date, and that the Society thereupon 

 came to an end. 



In December of the same year (1873), Sir W^illiam Macleay 

 took the important step of notifying to the Senate of the University 

 of Sydney that he was prepared to bequeath his library and 

 collections to the University, and to endow the Curatorship; and 

 at the same time he forwarded a copy of the terms of his bequest. 

 The Senate accepted the offer, and at the University Commemo- 

 ration on the 2Sth March, 1874, the Chancellor, Sir Edward 

 Deas Thomson, C.B., made reference to the matter in the course 

 of his address (as reported in the daily papers of March 30th.) 



