( V ) 



In Chap. IX., 2. — To read, " General Meetings of the Academy- 

 shall also be held at 8 o'clock, p.m., on the second Monday of Novem. 

 ber and December, and on the second and fourth Mondays of January, 

 February, April, May, and June; excepting Monday in Whitsun- week, 

 and the second Monday in January, when it shall occur before the tenth 

 day of that month." 



In Chap. IX., 8. — To insert after " inclusive," the words " ex- 

 cepting the first Monday in January, and Monday in Whitsun-week." 

 • The Academy then adjourned. 



Monday, Xotembee 30, 1874. 

 William Stokes, M. D., F. R. S., President, in the Chair. 



The President proceeded to read his Inaugural Address : — 



Genxleiien, 



It may have appeared to some members of the Academy, 

 that at the meeting following that on which the distinction of 

 being elected your President was conferred upon me, I should have 

 addressed you upon the prospects of our body — on its position with 

 regard to what it has done and what it is to be hoped it may yet 

 achieve. 



Yet, I trust that the delay which has occuiTed in thus inaugu- 

 rating my term of office by such a retrospective and prospective 

 sketch will be forgiven by you when you reflect that to make the 

 address in any way worthy of the occasion and the place must neces- 

 sarily be an onerous and important task. 



Dating fi.'om the middle period of our Academy's existence, when 

 the chair was filled by Brinkley, what a crowd of memories of 

 great and good men, whose labours have done so much for the science, 

 literature, and the archaeology of the country, and therefore for 

 the honour of the Academy, rush upon the mind. Some of them, it 

 is true, have fought the good fight, leaving the light of their memories 

 streaming behind them to ornament the past and illuminate the future, 

 but we have many fellow-academicians still spared to us — to continue to 

 enlighten our loved and, in more senses than one, our singular country, 

 for it is a country singular for the mental power and the moral excel- 

 lence of its inhabitants, for its ancient written and monumental 

 history, its language, which in the sixth, seventh, and eighth cen- 



