February, 1907.1 Annual Address. 



XXI 



responsible and onerous. It has not been easy, therefore, for ine 

 to give that attention which I should have liked to have given 

 to the work of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. I have been able 

 to attend with pleasure and profit a good number of the meet- 

 ings ; but I have not been able to do, either in this respect or 

 in some other respects, what I should have liked to have done. 

 I was courteously invited the other day to remain, in some 

 capacity or other, an officer of the Society ; but I have felt it my 

 duty to decline that further honour, not because I have no in- 



terest in the work of the Society, but because my interest in it 

 is too real to allow me to sacrifice it to my own gratification. 

 There are others who can better perform the duties attaching to 

 office in connection with this Society; and I am very willin^^ to 



nour 



my interest in the Society's welfare will not be considered the 

 less on that account. I remain a member of the Society; and if 



concerns, I trust that 



you will command me. Again I thank you for the honour confer- 

 red on me in bestowing on me the office which I have this 

 evening to vacate- Although 1 cannot claim to have discharged 

 its duties even in any degree to my own satisfaction, yet I shall 

 always look back upon my tenure of this office with pride and 

 pleasure, and with a sense of gratitude for the consideration 

 shown to me by the members of the Society. 



Last year I was unable to be present at the Annual Meeting 

 owing to my absence from Calcutta on a tour in Bihar with His 

 Excellency the Viceroy. As you are aware, the rules of tlie 

 Society have fixed the date of the Annual Meeting ; and it was 

 impossible for me to be present in Calcutta on tliat date. My 

 learned friend, the Hon'ble Mr. Justice AsLutosh Mukerji, kindly 

 took my place and delivered the annual address. I am in one 

 respect not quite so h appy this year. Last yea r the fi rst 

 Wednesday in February found me in restful and hopeful expecta- 

 tion of reading the interesting and able address which was being 

 delivered on my behalf in Calcutta. This year 1 have to speak 

 for myself. I do not, however, intend to detain you with a 

 long address- There has now been in existence for several years 

 an excellent arrangement, that the report should be prepared by 

 the Secretaries of each section who are well fitted to explain 

 what has been done in the various departments of the Society's 

 work. This relieves the President of the serious responsibility 

 of endeavouring to expound to experts in the various branches 

 of the work of the Society, matters in respect of at least many 

 of which he must, under the most favourable circumstances, be 

 only an amateur. It is an arrangement of which I shall certain- 

 ly take full advantage ; for I feel quite unable to discuss effect- 

 ively before this audience the work of the year. The i-eport 

 prepared by the General Secretary from the reports of the 

 Secretaries of sections has been placea before you, and is in your 

 hands. I shall leave it to speak for itself. 



The report records the death of four Ordinary ^Nft^nibera and 



