PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
1783 
Nikolai Nikolaevitch 
Mikleho-Maclay died in St. Petersburgh in Api’il last. Of an 
ancient Cossack family, he was born on his father’s estate in the 
Ukraine in 1846. At the age of nineteen he commenced the study 
of jurisprudence at Heidelberg, which however he soon abandoned 
for the more congenial pursuit of Natural Science, and especially of 
Comparative Anatomy, at Jena and Leipzig. After many exten- 
sive excursions (in pai't at least in the company of Prof. Haeckel), 
reaching as far as the Canaries on the one side and the Red Sea 
on the other, we find him at Messina with Dr. Dohrn engaged in 
zoological researches. It was here that the difficulties which beset 
their investigation comfinced them that the most important means 
for assisting the advance of Biological Science was the establish- 
ment of what we now-a-days call Biological Stations. From this 
conviction has grown the great institution at Naples, the parent of 
many. Maclay took great pains to have such a station established 
here, and ^\nth some success. But the building which was erected 
has been required for the purposes of military defence, and the 
matter is now in abeyance. 
I shall not attempt to follow the course of Maclay’s travels, 
which may be found in a very full notice of his travels and labours 
by Dr. O. Finsch. (Deutsche Geographische Blatter, xi. 3 and 4). 
It is sufficient to refer to his solitary residence among the wild 
Papuans of Astrolabe Bay during a period of 17 months, from 
which he was rescued, more dead than alive, by a Russian Man-of- 
W ar. 
I proceed to mention that he arrived in Sydney for the first 
time in July 1878, when he became the guest of our friend INIr. 
Macleay, leaving again in !March 1879, for New Guinea and 
Melanesia. Returning to Australia he remained for some months 
in Queensland, pu.sliing his investigations as usual, until in 
January 1881 he again re-appeared in Sydney. After another 
trip in the Wolverine to the S.E. of New Guinea, lie left us for 
St. Petersburg, in order to make arrangements for the publication 
