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The Anniversary Address by Walter 

 Howchin, F.G.S. (President). 



In vacating the Chair, which I have had the honour to occupy 

 for the past two years, I shall be following traditional usage if I 

 make a brief reference to the present position and prospects of 

 the Society. With the current year we publish the twenty-first 

 volume of the Transactions and proceedings of the Royal Society 

 of South Australia. The Society has completed the second 

 decade of its existence, and has a record of work which, if con- 

 sidered with a due regard to its limited membership, and equally 

 limited means, is a matter for congratulation. When we con- 

 sider the great geographical extent of the colony, and the com- 

 paratively recent settlement of its population, it will be under- 

 stood that the scientific workers have been hitherto mainly 

 engaged in pioneering work, sketching the broader outlines, and 

 gathering the more evident facts in this vast scientific field. 



The past year has not been destitute of work done by Fellows 

 of the Society which mark distinct stages in scientific achieve- 

 ments. The first-fruits of Dr. Stirling's and Mr. Zietz's patient 

 elaboration of the Callabonna fossil faurue has been published in 

 our Transactions in elucidation of the feet and leg-bones of the 

 great struthious birds which have become extinct on Australian 

 soil within comparatively recent geological time. The same 

 authors have had the honor to place a unique exhibit before the 

 Society in a complete osteological restoration of the fore and hind 

 feet of the Diprotodon, the first occasion in which these much- 

 debated appendages have been discovered and placed before a 

 scientific society. Dr. J. C. Verco's further descriptions of new 

 species of marine mollusca from his dredgings in South Aus- 

 tralian waters, and the Monograph on the Opisthobranchs of the 

 Older Tertiary of Australia by the French specialist and Honorary 

 Fellow of this Society, Maurice Cossmann, are respectively con- 

 tributions of great value. Within the sphere of new geological 

 observations may be noted the glacial discoveries in the Inman 

 Valley, Yankalilla, and Cape Jervis districts, which have 

 revealed an extinct icefield of vast extent, of which the Hallett's 

 Cove deposits form but a distant outlier. The discovery of a 

 thick group of Lower Cambrian limestones, with characteristic 

 fossils, in the Ranges extending from Nonnaiivilte to Willunga 

 is of great interest as bearing on the possible age of the Mount 

 Lofty series, it being the only clearly determined datum line in 



