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PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



Professor Rexxie read his annual Presidential address as 

 follows : — 



It is with feelings of some regret that I am here this evening 

 to deliver the annual address as President of the Royal Society 

 of South Australia ; regret, I mean, that I have not been able to 

 do so much as I would like to have done to promote its interests. 

 My failure to do more has arisen partly from the multiplicity of 

 other duties to which I have been obliged to give attention during 

 the past two years, and partly from the fact that the subjects 

 dealt with by the Fellows who have come before us here have 

 been for the most part connected with a department of science 

 with which I am far from familiar, viz., Natural History. This 

 must always be more or less a principal subject with a young. 

 Society in a new country. It is therefore with great satisfaction, 

 I think, that we should welcome as two new members of council 

 for the ensuing year two gentlemen who are zealous students of 

 the natural sciences, and to one of whom the Society owes a great 

 deal of what success has attended its meetings, if not its actual 

 existence, in past years. 



Turning now to those matters on which I am to address you 

 this evening, let me say first that I had considerable difiiculty in 

 the choice of a subject, scarcely knowing what would prove most 

 interesting to this audience. It has very appropriately been the 

 custom on similar occasions to give some account of the advances 

 made during the past year or years in the subject with which the 

 speaker is most familiar, but in this case such a course would have 

 necessitated such an account of the more abstruse portions of 

 chemistry as could scarcely have been condensed into the limits 

 of such an address as this, even if they proved of sufficient inte- 

 rest to the majority of my hearers. 



After some deliberation I have decided to say a few words on 

 the present state of some of those industries of these colonies in 

 which chemical science is more or less involved, and in some cases 

 to suggest what seem to me to be the possibilities of economy and 

 development in the future. I do not claim originality, nor do I 

 claim to be in a position to discuss fully all the circumstances of 

 each case, but simply venture to hope that by drawing attention 

 to certain facts some few may be induced to think over the possibi- 

 lities of future improvement, and, perchance, to take steps to bring 

 about practical advances in our industrial processes. If some of 



