432 



TiMEHRI. 



that the Secretary be instructed to reply expressing the 

 views of Mr. R. G, Duncan. 



A Government Communication was read informing 

 the Society that it had been decided that the Colony 

 should not be officially represented at the Paris Ex- 

 hibition of 1900. 



The President then gave the following valediftory 



adddress : — 



Gentlemen, — It seems to me hardly possible that a year can have 

 passed or nearly passed since your then President, my honourable 

 friend, Mr. Luard, paid me the great honour of nominating me for your 

 approval as his successor in the Chair of this important Society ; and full 

 of incident as that year has been, it has proved too short for theaccom< 

 plishment of the many wishes, the many aspirations and desires with 

 which I most diffidently accepted this high office at your hands. At the end 

 of April last circumstances over which I had no control necessitated my 

 absence from the Colony for some four months, but knowing that in Mr. 

 Luard, your Vice-President, you had a gentleman whose aftive interest in 

 the Society's affairs and in its welfare, whose great experience and know- 

 ledge had long been fully proved, I felt that my absence could not be 

 counted as detrimental in any way, but as of advantage rather to the So- 

 ciety. The year now so shortly coming to a close has, as I have observed, 

 been full, unusually full, of incident for our Colony, and there has been 

 much to cause grave apprehensions to those whose life interests are 

 centered within its borders. Many of us at this year's opening viewed 

 the general situation, I think, as more hopeful— as fraught with brighter 

 possibilities than the immediately preceding periods ; and the sur- 

 rounding circumstances in January last would seem, in my humble 

 opinion, to have justified that view. There was a better prospect for 

 the market of our staple produce ; there was the certain knowledge that 

 this great possession of Her Majesty, the only one in South America, 

 was attrafting wider interest — was becoming more generally known than 

 n all the years during which it has rejoiced in being an integral por- 

 tion of our Queen's great Empire — on the political horizon, there was a 

 strong feeling of security and an unquestioning confidence in those to 

 whom the affairs of our Sovereign's realm were intrusted, and that such 

 feeling and such confidence were in no way misplaced has, I thinK, been 



