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ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 

 Lieut. -Col. H. H. Godwin- Austek, F.R.S., etc. 



Delivered lOth February, 1899. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, 



The Address of your first President, Dr. Henry Woodward, 

 contained, as he happily termed it, "a haul of the naturalist's 

 dredge," and enumerated in chronological order the progress of 

 marine exploration, both prirate and public, the outcome of many 

 cruises, initiated by our own and foreign nations, to investigate the 

 fauna of the deep sea ; and he followed this by several pages of the 

 interesting results, with valuable suggestions as to the distribution 

 of certain forms in time and space. 



Tour second President, Dr. G. B. Howes, has on two occasions, 

 in 1895 and 189B, taken as his subject the progress of malacological 

 science, during the short existence of our Society, in the field, the 

 museum, and the laboratory. In these two Addresses Dr. Howes' 

 large and varied knowledge not only of the literature on the subject, 

 but of the great work in progress, is shown on every page. I feel 

 it a difficult task to follow so talented a predecessor in this chair. 

 He stands on a platform of biological inquiry which I, although 

 keenly desiring to explore it closely, can only survey from a distance. 

 Hence I cannot hope to cover so wide a field, full of fresh discovery 

 and suggestiveness. My sphere of labour has been in India, an 

 area large in itself, but small when compared to the rest of the 

 world ; my researches have been confined to the land and fresh- 

 water mollusca, and as a field collector to only a portion of our 

 Indian Empire. My duties carried me for years to the high 

 mountains of the country, never to the seaboard, so that my know- 

 ledge of marine shells is restricted to such fossil forms as I had 

 opportunity now and then to collect. 



A short account of the Indian workers in this branch of ISTatural 

 History may be of interest. Excluding the European conchologists, 

 Pfeiffer, Cuming, etc., who described single species, or collections, 

 from the East, brought or sent home at various times, with the 

 localities often very ill-defined, according to our present ideas and 

 requirements regarding distribution, the work of conchology in 

 our Indian possessions does not go back very far in time. The 

 first systematic collectors of land-shells were Capt. Thomas Hutton, 

 of the 37th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry, and Mr. W. H. 

 Benson, of the Bengal Civil Service. Hutton's first contribution 

 is to be found in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 

 entitled "Notices of some Land and Eresh^- water Shells occurring in 



VOL. HI. JULY, 1899. 17 



