president's address. 717 



should be expended. We are thus assured in the possession of a 

 commodious building and an excellent library ; we have sufficient 

 funds for the payment of the necessary salaries, and sufficient for 

 the printing and illustration of the Proceedings. But let me 

 remind you, in the contemplation of this condition of material 

 prosperity, that the spiritual ivellbeing, if I may so call it, of the 

 Society is by no means assured by this ; and that it can only be 

 by continuous and well-directed effort that the essential objects of 

 such an association as ours can be carried out. 



Our object is defined in our Rules and in our Act of Incorpora- 

 tion as being " the cultivation and study of the science of Natural 

 History in all its branches." Like all kindred associations we 

 must keep before us as our principal end and aim the advance- 

 ment and extension of exact knowledge in the departments of 

 science with which we deal. Such a Society as ours would be 

 falling greatly short of its duty could it not show every year in 

 its published Proceedings some substantial gain to science, some 

 little area, however small, added to the domain of our knowledge of 

 Nature. It is true that the Society as such can do little in this way ; 

 new accessions to science must always be made by the individual 

 worker, and the number of such workers in such a Society as ours 

 — though I hope they will increase as time goes on and scientific 

 training becomes more widely diffused — can never be very great. 

 But one of the duties of the Society, which its members should 

 keep steadily in view, is to keep up and increase the number of 

 such investigators, and to do everything in its power to aid them 

 in their work and facilitate the publication of its results. Now 

 I think we can all do something in this direction : we can all do 

 something to extend a taste for the study of natural science, and 

 we may even occasionally have an opportunity of encouraging one 

 or another to devote himself to it. In extending the sphere of 

 the Society's influence, even in attending its meetings, we are 

 doing something to promote the objects at which it aims. Were 

 such members of the Society as are not active workers in natural 

 science to withdraw all but their nominal and pecuniary connec- 

 tion with our body, the working members would, I am assured, 



