ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING. 
30th January, 1889. 
PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
When I last had the honour of addressing this Society, rather 
more than a year ago, many persons were endeavouring to get the 
Centenary celebrated with universal rejoicings. The most absurd 
proposals were heard exploding in all directions, in the vain effort to 
stimulate an enthusiasm which had no substance or basis. Each 
agitator called upon everybody else to be enthusiastic, but no 
symptoms of enthusiasm were visible, excepting those which were 
well paid for out of the public purse. 
But no one can deny that we have kept our Centennial year in a 
way not lightly to be forgotten. With political squabbling and 
scuffling inside and outside Parliament, with strikes among 
shearers, coalminers, and mariners on grounds incredibly slight, 
and accompanied by symptoms of a dangerous want of self-control, 
with clamour against Chinese labour, and affected terror of invasion 
by Chinese hordes, and with a disastrous drought over the greater 
part of the territory, we must admit that we have something to 
remember. We close the year very consistently with a battle- 
royal between Protection and Free Trade. Yet the community 
as a whole has kept an even course, undisturbed by all this 
skirmishing on its frontiers — and the prosecution of scientific 
and literary studies hius certainly shown no signs of enfeeble- 
ment. 
One enterprise indeed seems to require special mention, though 
it is not for me to enter into details. That is the inauguration of 
the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science 
(mainly due to the perseverance of Professor Liversidge\ which 
will, we trust, grow by degrees into an institution as potent for 
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