17 
of art will soon be added. Our Committee under whose care the 
Museunr has been ever since its opening, 17 years ago, have 
addressed a memorial to the Town Council, renewing the offer 
they made then, to superintend the classification, and labelling of 
the specimens on their removal. We hope that this will be 
accepted, since it is highly important that such arrangements should 
be carried out under one sole authority, and that that authority 
should be one thoroughly conversant with natural history. We do 
not want our Museum to be a collection of curiosities, but a centre 
of education, and a representation of what our own district pro- 
duces. The work of our Society would not in any way trench upon 
the duties of the Museum Committee of the Town Council which 
has always co-existed with our own. 
We are in correspondence with the following Societies, with 
which we exchange copies of the proceedings. 
Tunbridge Wells Natural History Society. 
Huddersfield Naturalists’ Society. 
East Kent Natural History Society. 
Brighton and Sussex Natural History Society. 
Eastbourne Natural History Society. 
Harrogate Natural and Scientific Society. 
Philadelphia, Academy of Science. 
New York Academy of Science. 
Imperial German Academy, Halle on the Saale. 
Copies of these proceedings can be seen on application to the 
Secretary. 
PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
Dr. Fitz-Gerald then gave his annual address as follows :— 
This is an age of averages ; of average excellence if you will, but 
nevertheless emphatically a level, average age. This is the in- 
evitable result of the levelling-up tendency caused by the increase 
of technical education, spread of scientific thought, and general 
evolution of intellect. Look around on the world; everywhere is 
seen the same dead level of uniform intelligence ; an extra inch of 
intellectual stature makes a man respectably eminent. Nowhere do 
we see the heroes of a former age; no being of colossal intellect 
towers far above his puny fellow-men. Where shall we find the 
Newtons, the Galileos, the Herschels of the past? No Milton, no 
Shakespeare, no Dante or Goethe moves our feelings or charms 
our ear ; no Titians, Vandyke, or Rembrandt delights our eye ; no 
Frederick the Great, no Napoleon, alternately rouses the terrors and 
admiration of a hemisphere; no Macready stirs our inmost feelings 
on the stage; no Burke or Pitt keeps a wondering world spell- 
tie 
