12 President's Address 



trious predecessors in the chair. Being enabled to place it 

 before you for inspection, I am spared a task that I am 

 hardly at all able for, viz., attempting to give you an idea 

 of its utility, or of the most exquisite manner in which the 

 plates have been prepared and executed. It may be doubted 

 if any work exists on which so much labour has been 

 bestowed to render it scientifically correct in its minutest 

 details of phytographic diagnosis. From the same author 

 we have the fifth part of " Phytographise Australise," and 

 "A Monograph of the Plants of the Chatham Islands." 

 All these works need no praise that I can bestow upon 

 them. 



We have also '^ A History of the Discovery and Exploration 

 of Australia, by the. Eev. Julian E. Tennison Woods, an 

 account of the progress of geographical discovery in that 

 Continent to the present day," a work which bids fair to 

 be a standard of reference on many matters treated in it. 

 But concerning one subject — the fate of Burke and WiUs — I 

 feel it my duty to state my regret, that this talented but 

 youthful author should have lent himself to abuse the 

 Exploration Committee, and to write for sensation. As soon 

 as he approaches the subject of the Exploration Committee, 

 we have a direct insult put upon those gentlemen, and then 

 comes the prophet's tale of lamentation, and weeping, and 

 woe. For his own sake, I will indulge a hope that he never 

 saw, or at least not in time to prevent his unqualified state- 

 ments about the conduct of the Exploration Committee from 

 appearing in print, the address of my learned and eloquent 

 predecessor in this chair, Professor M'Coy, delivered this 

 time last year, which supplies much information which as a 

 member of the Exploration Committee he was not called 

 upon to meddle with, but which as President of the Royal 

 Society, in adverting to the conduct of the Exploring Expe- 

 dition, he had a perfect right to disclose. This portion of his 



