82 Election of Office-Bearers and Members of Council [Feb. 



merely for reference within those walls, but also for the use of members 

 living at a distance, who are entitled to take out books subject to certain 

 necessary 'ami not very onerous) conditions. A valued member of the 

 Society, himself a worker in the field of anthropological inquiry, has 

 taken the trouble to specify a number of books which he wished the 

 Society to procure in order to assist him in his own investigations. If 

 other members, working in different fields, would help the Library Com- 

 mittee with similar suggestions, tin- effect would be to increase the value 

 of the Library for practical purposes and its usefulness to members ; and 

 the Council would, I may safely say, be very ready to meet such sugges- 

 t ions so far as it lay within their means to do so. 



In his Annual Address last year my predecessor, Mr. Beveridge, 

 threw out a suggestion that, instead of monthly meetings at which sub- 

 jects of all kinds were discussed indiscriminately, we should have separate 

 fortnightly meetings for the discussion alternately of literary and archaeo- 

 logical subjects, and of those relating to the Natural Sciences. Mr. 

 Beveridge observed that " under the present system, only about half of 

 the audience is interested in any paper that is being read. As a rule 

 the zoologist docs not care for inscriptions or coins, and the numismatist 

 or philologist does not care for animals or plants." This suggestion 

 has since been repeated ; but so far as I could understand the 

 general sense of the Society, it was rather to the effect that the pro- 

 posal left out of sight that considerable number of members who, 

 without being specialists in any subject, took a general interest in all. 

 These are the members whom we wish to attract to the Society, in the 

 hope that some of them may be stimulated, by what they see and hear 

 at our monthly meetings, to devote themselves to some branch of inquiry, 

 it may be scientific, or it may be literary, which may from time excite 

 their interest. Nor do I think that the restriction of interest to one 

 branch of knowledge or the other is, even among specialists, so ab- 

 solute as is sometimes supposed. If so, it would lie hard on such 

 members to compel their attendance at two meetings where one has 

 hitherto sufficed. 



Gentlemen, I beg to offer you my cordial thanks tor the honour 

 that you did me last year in electing mo your President, and for the 

 patienl attention with which you have listened to this address. 



The Presidium announced that the Scrutineers reported the result 

 of the election of Office-Bearers and Members of Council to be as fol- 

 lows: — 



Vresidt nt. 



Hon. Sir A W. Croft, K. C. 1. E. : M. A 



