xx President's Address 



The relative importance attached to the particular branch 

 of science discussed in each must depend mainly on the bent 

 of our individual minds ; but among the twenty papers thus 

 communicated will be found some not merely interesting in 

 a scientific point of view, but of direct practical importance. 



Of this latter class, I may enumerate Mr. Acheson's trea- 

 tise on a " New System of Ventilating Public Buildings," 

 with Mr. Knight's comments thereon ; Suggestions by the 

 last named gentleman for holding an Australian Exhibition, 

 preparatory to the Imperial Exhibition in 1862, (the first 

 appeal to public attention on this important matter ;) Remarks 

 on the " Cultivation of Cotton," by the Hon. Mr. O'Shanassy ; 

 Captain Perry's description of his " Anti-collision Dial and 

 Shipwreck Preventor," (which seems likely to prove a valua- 

 ble invention ;) " Suggestions for the Introduction of Animals 

 and Plants," by Mr. Lockhart Morton ; as also, " A Descrip- 

 tion of the Country near the Darling, and Proposals for the 

 Formation of a New Colony in Northern Australia," by the 

 same enterprising colonist; "A Notice of some Fibrous 

 Plants abundant in Australia," by Mr. Francis Corbett, as 

 well as an instructive contribution to our social statistics, by 

 the same gentleman ; and, lastly, a paper by Mr. Wilhelmi, 

 " On the Manners and Customs of the Natives of the Port 

 Lincoln District," containing much valuable information on 

 a subject which I would take the opportunity of impressing 

 on the attention of the Royal Society, with a view to the 

 institution of immediate and systematic inquiries of a similar 

 nature within our own territory. Whole tribes of the 

 aboriginal occupants of the soil, are, under some mysterious 

 dispensation, rapidly disappearing, and the links which their 

 dialects and traditions might supply to the ethnologist, will, 

 without some effort on our part, be lost for ever. When at 

 Omeo, two years since, the last survivor of the numerous 

 and warlike tribe which had disputed possession w r ith the 



