1 8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



PEESIDENTIAL ADDEESS, 1905. 



Fellows op the Linnean Society, — 



It is my first duty — and like most duties when looked at 

 from a common-sense point of view, it is also a great pleasure — to 

 thank you for the honour you have done me and for the confidence 

 you have shown in elevating me to this position. If I hesitated 

 before accepting the nomination by Council it was not that I was 

 in any way insensible to the honour proposed, but rather that I 

 felt it to be beyond my deserts, and, amongst other reasons, 

 because I doubted whether one whose chief Mork lay 200 miles 

 away could efficiently discharge the duties you would naturally 

 expect from your President. However, the kind assurances of 

 prominent members of the Council overcame my doubts ; and I 

 will only add that there was some comfort in the tl) ought that 

 there is possibly one qualification which I was conscious of — 

 namely, a strong desire to be of use and to advance in any way in 

 my power the Linnean Society and the cause of Natural Science. 



The Session during which, thanks to your kindness, I have 

 been privileged to occupy this chair has been in several ways a 

 memorable one. At the last Anniversary Meeting, my distin- 

 guished predecessor was able to aunounce in his Presidential 

 Address that the Supplemental Charter of the Society had at last 

 been granted, and he very properly alluded to the labour and 

 expense which the Treasurer with characteristic generosity had 

 borne single-handed — one only of many acts of thoughtful kindness 

 on the part of Mr. Frank Crisp, from which the Society has 

 benefitted. The loss which we sustain iu the retirement of 

 Mr. Crisp from the office of Treasurer, which he has held for 

 nearly a quarter of a century, will be brought before tlie attention 

 of the Society in a separate resolution. 



In order to carry out the provisions of the Supplemental Charter 

 it became necessary that the Bye-Laws of the Society should be 

 revised, and one of the first duties 1 had to perform on taking 

 office last June was to bring before your notice the draft revision 

 carefully prepared by the Council of the previous session. The 

 revised Bye-Laws were duly read from the Chair, as required by 

 the Charter of 1802, at our meetings on June 2nd and June 16th, 

 and were, I am happy to say, formally approved by the Fellows at 

 our meeting on November 3rd, 1904. 



These formalities completed, it became possible for us to bring 

 about that great event in the history of our Society which has been 

 predicted and commented on in more than one recent Presidential 

 Address — the admission of Lady-Fellows. From that time forwards 

 the Fellowship of the Linnean Society of London was open to 

 worthy candidates ^\ithout distinction of sex. The response to 



