THE PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
GENTLEMEN, 
It is a great pleasure to congratulate the Society at the 
close of another successful year. The repetition of this con- 
gratulation in successive Annual Addresses is happily almost 
monotonous. It is a monotony which will never weary us, 
and in itself an indication that no other monotony has 
prevailed. 
The meetings have been well attended, there have been 
numerous, varied, and interesting exhibits leading to animated 
discussions. Our Transactions do not reach the phenomenal 
dimensions attained in 1902, but still form a noble volume, 
containing 23 plates and well over 600 pages. There is a 
pleasing variety in the papers, and the domination of the 
Lepidoptera is less pronounced than usual. An important 
share of the space is occupied by memoirs on the Coleoptera, 
Hymenoptera, and Insect Bionomics, while the Diptera and 
Rhynchota are also represented. 
I should wish to refer again to the warmth of the greeting 
received as your President at a meeting of the Entomological 
Society of France on April 22nd. The cordial friendship 
between the followers of science in all lands is of happy augury 
for the advancement of the researches in which we find common 
aims and mutual sympathy and respect. 
On this, the first occasion on which I have the honour of 
addressng you formally, I cannot resist the temptation of 
ealling attention to a remarkable coincidence of a personal 
nature—the fact that the present occupant of this Chair and 
his immediate predecessor should be members not only of the 
same University, but of the same College, and that not a large 
one. When this fact was explained to a friend he said it 
was easily understood, because the study of natural history is 
infectious. This suggestion, plausible as it is, fails to account 
for the fact ; inasmuch as Canon Fowler left Jesus College, 
