17 



of art will soon be added. Our Committee under whose care the 

 Museunr has been ever since its opening, 17 years ago, have 

 addressed a memorial to the Town Council, renewing the offer 

 they made then, to superintend the classification, and labelling of 

 the specimens on their removal. We hope that this will be 

 accepted, since it is highly important that such arrangements should 

 be carried out under one sole authority, and that that authority 

 should be one thoroughly conversant with natural history. We do 

 not want our Museum to be a collection of curiosities, but a centre 

 of education, and a representation of what our own district pro- 

 duces. The work of our Society would not in anyway trench upon 

 the duties of the Museum Committee of the Town Council which 

 has always co-existed with our own. 



We are in correspondence with the following Societies, with 

 which we exchange copies of the proceedings. 



Tunbridge Wells Natural History Society. 



Huddersfield Naturalists' Society. 



East Kent Natural History Society. 



Brighton and Sussex Natural History Society. 



Eastbourne Natural History Society. 



Harrogate Natural and Scientific Society. 



Philadelphia, Academy of Science. 



New York Academy of Science. 



Imperial German Academy, Halle on the Saale. 

 Copies of these proceedings can be seen on application to the 

 Secretary. 



pkesident's address. 



Dr. Fitz-Gerald then gave his annual address as follows : — 

 This is an age of averages ; of average excellence if you will, .but 

 nevertheless emphatically a level, average age. This is the in- 

 evitable result of the levelling-up tendency caused by the increase 

 of technical education, spread of scientific thought, and general 

 evolution of intellect. Look around on the world ; everywhere is 

 seen the same dead level of uniform intelligence ; an extra inch of 

 intellectual stature makes a man respectably eminent. Nowhere do 

 we see the heroes of a former age ; no being of colossal intellect 

 towers far above his puny fellow-men. Where shall we find the 

 Newtons, the Galileos, the Herschels of the past ? No Milton, no 

 Shakespeare, no Dante or Goethe moves our feelings or charms 

 our ear ; no Titians, Vandyke, or Rembrandt delights our eye ; no 

 Frederick the Great, no Napoleon, alternately rouses the terrors and 

 admiration of a hemisphere ; no Macready stirs our inmost feelings 

 on the stage ; no Burke or Pitt keeps a wondering world spell- 



