ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 



OF THE 



PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF VICTORIA. 



By R. L. J. Ellery.* 



Gentlemen of the Royal Society of Victoria : For the third time it 

 devolves tipon me as your President to deliver the annual address on this occasion, 

 inaugurating our 13th session. 



The honor you have thus conferred upon me was, I confess, an unexpected 

 one; I beg, however, to assure you most earnestly thati am fully sensible of tho 

 distinction implied in your trust, and no less of the responsibility which it entails. 



On similar occasions it has been our custom to review the society's operations 

 during the previous session, touching, also, on the scientific progress of our public 

 scientific institutions during the past year. Adopting our usual plan, I now pro- 

 pose to briefly review, first, tho contributions laid before you at your various 

 meetings during your last session, following this by a general survey of the yeai-'s 

 history of our scientific departments, and concluding with a brief notice of one or 

 two of the more salient points of scientific discovery belonging to the year 1 8G7 ; for 

 the scientific institutions of the colony derive so much strength and direction from 

 the work done at the older centres of learning that no review of our progress is, 

 I conceive, adequately represented without some reference to the general progress 

 of hmnan knowledge. 



If, in referring to the work of our past session, I appear to dwell unduly upon 

 some of the subjects which have occupied your attention, I ask you to fi)llow me 

 in regarding them as of mf»re than usual interest and importance, and on that 

 account claiming a more detailed consideration. 



During our last session we held 11 ordinary meetings. The papers and the 

 discussions following the reading of them were generally of great interest and 

 importance, doubtless aiding us in our advance in the departments of knowledge 

 to which they belong. By the indefatigable zeal of your honorary secretary, 

 Mr. Thomas H. Eawlings, the whole of the last year's transactions have been 

 printed, and were placed in your hands shortly after the close of the year, and 

 also distributed to the various learned societies with which we are in communi- 

 cation. 



Of the contributions laid before j^ou, two pertain to physical science, three to 

 the natural history of Australia, three to the develo])mcnt of our nattu'al resources, 

 two to pathological science, four to the geology, mineralogy, and palseontology 

 of Australia and New Zealand, one to social science, and two to applied chemistry. 



I will first refer to the Rev. J. E. Tenison Wood's paper '' On the Glacial 

 Period of Australia," in which he gives his reasons for concbiding that " during 

 the glacial period of Europe our continent and seas have passed through a sub- 

 tropical climate," or at least a much warmer orie than we now experience. lie 

 stated, as you well remember, tliat he did not base liis opinion u]ion tlie absence 

 of those groovings and striations left by the mighty slip of glaciers and icebergs — 

 for in the northern hemisphere these are not found lower than the 40th parallel 



* From the Transactions of the Eoyal Society of Victoria, part 1, vol. 9, July, 1868. 



