xxviii Presidents Address 



on Cooper's Creek, and of his departure thence to skirt the 

 eastern border of the desert, as the shortest route to the 

 Gulf of Carpentaria, hut for the delay which occurred in the 

 transmission of the second portion of his stores from the 

 Darling, which probably deterred him from sending back a 

 messenger with the news of bis movements. We know that 

 the rest of the party with these stores left the camp on that 

 river on the 24th of January, so that we may soon expect 

 to receive intelligence of their junction, or of the course Mr. 

 Burke had adopted in their absence. It is certainly possible 

 that he may have pushed on towards the northern coast 

 without awaiting their arrival, but, as he was fully aware 

 that no arrangement was in contemplation for sending a 

 vessel to meet him there, he is not likely to have gone 

 beyond the point from which, with the aid of the camels, he 

 could fall back on his supplies ; and there seems, therefore, 

 no ground for anxiety as to his safety, though, of course, we 

 must be prepared to act promptly, according to the tenor of 

 the first advices which may reach us. 



Such are the self-imposed and gratuitously-performed 

 tasks in which the council and members of the Royal Society 

 have been busied during the past twelve months ; but I need 

 hardly remind you that several of the number have in their 

 professional and private capacities rendered far higher ser- 

 vices to science than any I have yet recorded. 



In November, 1859, Mr. John Walter Osborne communi- 

 cated to the Society a paper on a new photo-lithographic 

 process of his invention, the object of which was to reproduce 

 maps and plans on a reduced or enlarged scale, without trust- 

 ing to the human hand or eye, but relying on the aid of 

 photography alone to transfer them to the stone from which 

 they are to be printed. This object he proposed to accom- 

 plish mainly by the introduction of a peculiar species of 

 transfer paper, and I am happy now to state that the merit, 



