PRs DEN P'S) ADDRESS: 
Following precedent, the President addresses a few remarks to 
the Fellows at the Annual Meeting. The work of the past year 
has already been stated to you in the Report of the Council, and 
it is only necessary for me to congratulate the Society on the 
publication of a portion of the work in connection with the 
Callabonna fossils in quarto form as Memoirs. This has been 
necessary owing to the large size of the illustrations. Again the 
Society has to thank the Government for its enlightened gener- 
osity in placing a further sum of £100 on the Estimates of the 
current financial year for this purpose. It is to be hoped that at 
some future time a former contribution of the Callabonna fossils, — 
namely, the description of the bones of Genyornis Newtoni, may 
also be re-issued in the enlarged form, so as to allow of the whole 
of the Callabonna work being published on a uniform scale. 
Fortunately the negatives of the plates have been preserved, 
so that the expense would be trifling. It will, however, be a 
matter for regret that the idea of a joint descriptive anthropo- 
logical work on the Australian aborigines has not advanced beyond 
the stage of being referred to the meeting of the Australasian 
Association for the Advancement of Science, to be held in Mel- 
bourne next January. There are, no doubt, many difficulties of 
an organising nature that await solution, but it is to be hoped 
that the man and the hour will mutually rise equal to the occasion. 
But if the outlook is not so favourable as might be desired in 
this matter, there is still ample room for congratulation on the 
part of Australian Anthropologists, that in closely successive 
years two works on the Australian Aborigines of supreme import- 
ance have made their appearance. Reference is made to 
“« Kthnological Studies among the North-West Central Queensland 
Aborigines,” by Dr. Roth; and to “ Native Tribes of Central 
Australia,” by Prof. Baldwin Spencer and Mr. F. J. Gillen, 
Special Magistrate. All will agree that these works, although of 
immense value, do not reach finality : but as Poucnet says, in the 
preface to his work on “The Plurality of Races,” ‘Books are, 
after all, merely a summary; they are behind-hand even on the 
day they are published.” The learned authors, however, have 
literally put into practice the advice given by Flourens:—‘ We 
can only arrive at the distinction of species by direct and com- 
plete personal observation.” And as Pouchet, who quotes him, 
goes on to say :—‘“ The surest method of arriving at conclusive 
