xlu REPORT OF THE COUNCIL, 1930-31. 
when he shall deliver a Presidential Address. He shall resign office at the 
next Annual Meeting, when he inducts his successor into the Chair. 
The amendment recommended provides that :— 
The President shall assume office on the first day of January next following 
the Annual Meeting at which he is appointed. He shall deliver a Presidential 
Address at the Annual Meeting during his year of office, and shall vacate 
his office on the thirty-first day of December neat following that meeting. 
The Council has carefully considered this important amendment, 
which was proposed by one of the ex-presidents of the Association and 
approved by a large majority of the remainder. It is recommended on 
these grounds :— 
(1) That the President would be responsible administratively for the major part 
of the preparation of arrangements for the Annual Meeting over which he is elected 
to preside, and his influence could be more directly brought to bear upon them. 
(2) In particular, he would take the chair at the joint meeting of Organising 
Sectional Committees in the January preceding the Annual Meeting, which has now 
become a regular and principal part of the mechanism of preparing the programme. 
(3) As a point of minor but still recognisable importance, he would arrive at the 
place of the Annual Meeting as President, not as President-elect, and possible confusion 
in the local public mind would be avoided. 
(4) After the Annual Meeting he would still be in office to preside over those 
meetings of the Council at which matters arising out of the Annual Meeting are 
principally dealt with. 
The objection that the ceremony of installing the new President at the Inaugural 
Meeting would be lost, may be discounted, as it would still be possible for, e.g., the 
immediate ex-president to introduce the President to the first general meeting over 
which he would preside, but the existing Statute VI, 1, has proved to be unworkable 
on occasions, sometimes because of the unavoidable absence of the outgoing President. 
Down House. 
VII.—The following report for the year 1930-31 has been received 
from the Down House Committee :— 
The number of visitors to Down House during the year ending June 6, 1931, has 
been 5210, compared with 11,000 in the previous year. As this was the first, 
a diminution was to be foreseen, especially as in the earlier period a number of societies 
sent parties. The public interest appears to those in residence to be as great as could 
be expected, having regard to the geographical position of the house. 
Thanks have been tendered on behalf of the Committee for a number of gifts or 
loans, of which three call for special notice. The magnificent gift of shrubs and 
herbaceous plants from the Director of Kew Gardens, which in a measure repeats 
history, since the garden in Darwin’s time was certainly indebted to Hooker, will 
go far, in due season, to rehabilitate the grounds. The decision of Prof. A. C. Seward, 
F.R.S., to deposit the major part of the Darwin Library at Down House on loan 
(the library having been bequeathed by Sir Francis Darwin ‘to the professor of 
botany in the University of Cambridge for the time being ’) has already been gratefully 
acknowledged by the Council. The important series of letters from Darwin to Fritz 
Miiller in Brazil, which, as the Council are aware, was acquired by Prof. H. Fairfield 
Osborn from Miiller’s family for presentation to the Association, has now been 
received, together with a series of photostat facsimiles, contained in portfolios 
specially made and inscribed. 
The contents of the memorial rooms have been valued and insured against loss 
by fire. 
A catalogue of the exhibits has been prepared and printed for sale to visitors. 
The hon. curator, Mr. Buckston Browne, has arranged that the rooms shall be 
open to the public throughout the year, except on Christmas Day and Good Friday, 
between 10 and 6 o’clock from April to September, and between 11 and 4 o’clock 
from October to March. 
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