INAUGURAL ADDRESS. AN 
the homes of many new highlanders. You will be impressed 
with the solemnity and almost awe of stillness away from the 
haunts of man, feelings of human insignificance arising within 
scenes of nature so incomparably grand; there man is drawing 
nearer in his thoughts to the Divine Power ruling all. 
Science nowhere can stand still! Linguistic science is not 
foreign to this Association. Thus, then, time-hallowed expressions, 
though some of them may have come as a glossarian inheritage 
even from Pythagorean antiquity, and may have continued of 
daily frequency, will have to give way to wordings in consonance 
with progressive discoveries. “Organography, even in instances of 
words, to which has been clung with tenacity since the Plinian 
age, will have yet to undergo some changes for the sake of greater 
accuracy in definiteness and more cleaimess in etymology. Com- 
matation in more than one of current languages could be brought 
better into accord with oscillations of “thought. The hyphen 
might for fuller perspicuity be more drawn into use, and particu- 
larly so in organic chemistry, which furnishes, even at the latest of 
dates, words so unwieldy in reading, and so unpronounceable in 
length, for its complex-compositions, that one single word may be 
composed in unbroken array of as many as forty-five letters, not 
unlike the extensiveness of construction in some Oriental languages ; 
while contrarily, abbreviations to such an extent as “Salol” for 
the new therapeutic chemical, ‘“ Salicylate of Phenol,” appear 
equally  deprecable. Speaking of ancient languages, it might 
passingly here be noted, from researches of Professor Sayce, of 
Oxford, in most recent days, that a brisk literary intercourse 
existed in cuneate lettering between all the countries from the 
Nile to the Euphrates during the fifteenth century before the 
Christian era. This was shown by unearthing the ruins of the 
vesidence-town of Amenophis the Fourth. Contrast with this the 
still existing stoneage of the Australian Nomades! We here 
cannot hope, to add much to what has been gathered already of 
the languages of the Australian aborigines for some further 
insight into the onward-march of the human races and the 
history of their progress ; but such chances, as may still exist, 
should not be lost for constructing further vocabularies, ere the 
remnants of the last tribes are passing away, or abandon their 
pristine languages, or forget their lore; what can still be secured 
will be all the more valuable, because it will—at best—be so seanty. 
Studies of this kind will become more significant, since a Vic- 
torian divine, as a missionary in the New Hebrides, traces 
the language there partly to Semitic origin. Indeed, linguistic 
research assumes also here now such magnitude, that it might be 
recommendable to constitute hereafter a division for “science of 
languages” in the section for literature within this Association. 
The moment seems an apt one, to pay some homage at this spot 
also to the bearers of the gospel, who, in their inostentatious yet 
