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THE PEESIDENT'S ADDRESS, 



Ladies and Gentlemen, 



It seems but a short time since I had the privilege of 

 addressing you, but another year of our Society's work is 

 completed. Our Meetings have been -well attended, and I 

 think no one has ever gone away from them feeling disap- 

 pointed, as they have always been interesting and helpful. 



In July last there was at the Linnean Society a celebration 

 of the fiftieth anniversary of the reading at that Society of 

 the joint paper on the origin of species by Darwin and 

 Wallace. I had the honour of representing this Society on 

 that occasion, and I shall not soon forget it, for it was a 

 striking demonstration of the veneration in which these 

 Scientists are held. 



Our volume of Transactions is again large, and one cannot 

 help wondering whether some of the most important papers 

 in it would ever have been written if it had not been for the 

 groundwork laid by those two men in the paper alluded to. 



I have to put on record the deaths of seven Fellows during 

 the past year, viz. — Frederic C, Lemann, Francis F. Freeman, 

 Thomas F. Furnival, Herbert Goss, Colonel C. T, Bingham, 

 T. Maddison, and John A. Clark. 



Herbert Goss joined our Society in 1874. He died on 

 February 16th, 1908. For 35 years he was in the Solicitor's 

 Office of the General Post Office. He took great interest in 

 Natural History generally, but was more especially devoted 

 to British Lepidoptera, of which he formed a most valuable 

 collection. He also had a very com^^lete herbarium of British 

 plants. He contributed a series of papers on Fossil Insects 

 to the " Entomologists' Monthly Magazine," which have been 

 since reprinted with the title "The Geological Antiquity of 

 Insects," which is a most useful resiimc of this branch of 



