PRESIDENCY 111 



usual formality of the presidential address.' * It is 

 easy to credit that the formal reading of an address 

 may in some instances be detrimentally destructive 

 of the speaker's personality. The practice, recently 

 introduced, of leaving sectional presidents free either 

 to read their addresses or to speak upon the topics 

 of them, may lead presidents of the Association 

 also to recall, in their discretion, the distinguished 

 precedent set by Ramsay in 1880. 



At each meeting of the Association the reception- 

 room or other convenient place is adorned with a 

 series of banners, some of which are illustrated here. 

 They bear the names of successive presidents and 

 the places of meeting where they presided. Some- 

 times the president's coat of arms is shown ; 

 sometimes that of the place of meeting ; sometimes 

 an emblematic device. This variety makes for 

 interest : the fact that variation of size has been 

 permitted is perhaps less fortunate. The series was 

 originated by the Historic Society of Lancashire 

 and Cheshire : the idea of it is attributed to the 

 Rev. Canon Abraham Hume, a well-known antiquary, 

 one of the founders of that society in 1848. The 

 banners appear to have been first made for the 

 Liverpool meeting of the Association in 1854. The 

 original series of twenty-four then displayed in the 

 Philharmonic Hall were made on a standard pattern 

 ' of white silk, and emblazoned in a very correct 

 and elegant style/ as a local report of the meeting 

 has it. Hume was a local secretary for the meeting 

 of the Association in Liverpool in 1870. Through 

 him the Historic Society interested itself actively 



1 Geikie, Memoir of Sir A. C. Ramsay, p. 347. 



