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f 
THE Hon’str Justice Sir Asvrosh MooxerJen, Kr., 
CS.1., Dis, D.Sc. F.BS.E., FRA. F.A.S.B., President, 
delivered an address. 
ANNUAL ADDRESS, 1922. 
GENTLEMEN, 
It has been my privilege to address the Society, at its 
annual gathering, so often during the last seventeen years, 
members. I felt, however, that if the term of office of the 
President were brought to a close without an address, however 
brief. it might create an unwelcome precedent. I shall conse- 
quently ask your indulgence while I refer to one or two subjects 
of interest to all well-wishers of the Society and supporters of 
its activities. - 
t is a matter of congratulation that notwithstanding the 
stress of economic conditions, our material prosperity has re- 
onths. There is no 
matter requires to be explored further. In connection with 
this project for the erection of a handsome building on this site. 
a gentleman, who may well claim to be a man of culture but 
who has not yet joined the Society, has seriously put to me 
the question, whether the Society which has now existed for 
140 years and has occupied these premises erected more than 
a century ago, is likely to last during the normal lifetime of a 
new habitation. I assured him, with my usual optimism. 
that the work of the Society would never come to an end, for 
had not our illlustrious Founder, with the boldness which 
characterised all his conceptions, defined the bounds of our 
investigation to be the geographical limits of Asia and included 
within the scope of our enquiries whatever is performed by 
man or produced by Nature. It is, I venture to think, 
not generally realised, even by well-educated people, that 
Society like this can never languish. It is of the problems in 
one of these fields alone that I shall venture to address you 
