THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 55 



ANNUAL CONVERSAZIONE. 



The tenth annual conversazione of the Club was held in the 

 Athenaeum Hall on Thursday evening, 28th May. 



A large audience assembled in the upper hall at 8 o'clock to 

 hear the annual address delivered by the retiring president, Mr. 

 C. A. Topp, M.A., LL.B., F.L.S.; the chair being taken by Baron 

 von Mueller, K.C.M.G., one of the patrons of the Club. 



The following is the text of that address : — 



Ladies and Gentlemen, — I have the honour, as president of 

 the Club, to make the customary annual summary of our pro- 

 ceedings during the past year — the eleventh of the Club's life — 

 and to make brief allusion to the principal matters outside our 

 Club's proceedings of interest to Victorian naturalists. 



Perhaps I may be permitted, before proceeding with my 

 pleasant duty, to express regret that during the past year I have 

 had reluctantly to absent myself from so many meetings of the 

 Club, and have not, therefore, that intimate knowledge of its 

 doings which it is so desirable that its office-bearers should have ; 

 perhaps still more have I felt my compulsory abstention from 

 those pleasant fortnightly gatherings of members by the riverside 

 or seashore on Saturday afternoons which I have always con- 

 sidered the essential feature of a field naturalists' club, and which, 

 I think a year ago, I urged as many members as possible to 

 attend, and spoke of as, in some respects, of more importance 

 than the monthly meetings. 



I can only assure members, in reference to this matter, that my 

 absence has been in no way due to any failing of interest in the 

 welfare of the Club, still less to any change of views as to the 

 pleasure and educative value of that outdoor study of nature in 

 all her moods, and of that training in observation and in patient 

 watching, and cautious reasoning from observed facts which in- 

 telligent collecting and field excursions should give, or as to the 

 benefits derived from that comparison of observations and of 

 specimens, fronj that contribution to a common stock of experi- 

 mental knowledge in diff"erent though allied sciences by different 

 workers, which is afforded by our monthly meetings. So keenly 

 do I feel how desirable it is that the principal officers of this Club 

 should in every way, and by example much more than by precept, 

 encourage and stimulate their fellow members in following the 

 paths to knowledge which our Club opens to its members, that 1 

 should have felt it my duty to resign my office had I not felt that 

 a president elected in the middle of the year is placed in a rather 

 unfair position, and had I not hoped that those public and urgent 

 duties which have kept me away from your meetings might so 

 diminish as to give me leisure to take again an active part at your 

 meetings and excursions. 



