PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 3 



During the year 40 papers on various subjects of interest 

 were read at the monthly meetings, and various interesting ex- 

 hibits were produced, as will fully appear in Volume xxiv. of 

 the Society's Proceedings, three Parts of which have been already 

 issued, and the fourth or final Part is now in the printer's hands. 



As it is usual, on occasions like the present, for the President 

 to address the members on some subject of interest, I have not 

 thought it right to depart from the usual custom, although the 

 preparation of such an address has been no small tax on my 

 leisure hours. 



The subject, which I have chosen and which has long been of 

 interest to me, is the question of the age of Australia; a subject 

 which, however, I admit, requires more knowledge and more 

 careful handling than I have been able to bring to bear upon it. 



Our great island continent having now been frequently crossed 

 and recrossed in various directions, and pretty fully explored, at 

 the expense of many valuable lives, and of an enormous amount of 

 suffering by the less unfortunate explorers, and the crude notion 

 of the existence of a great inland sea having been entirely 

 dissipated, a not inconsiderable mass of evidence has become 

 available for the consideration of the question of the age of 

 Australia. 



Far be it from me to pretend to deal authoritatively with this 

 question, for the more I have thought over it, the more my incom- 

 petence to deal with it has been brought home to me. I trust, 

 therefore, that what I am about to say may be looked upon merely 

 as hints, thrown out with the view of inducing competent scientists 

 to deal with the question. It will of course be so readily under- 

 stood that I have been indebted to many authors for most of my 

 facts, that I have only in a few instances quoted authorities 



It is not necessary that we should go back to the very origin of 

 the universe, but a few words, by way of preface, may, perhaps, 

 not be thought inappropriate. 



I therefore commence with the statement that, in the beginning 

 of the present order of things, the whole universe was filled with 

 matter of extreme tenuity, and generally supposed to have been 



