ANNUAL ADDRESS TO THE MEMBERS 
OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, 
On THE 26TH. August, 1891, 
By THE PRESIDENT, L. Prerincury, F.Z.S., F.E.S. 
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Ir has become customary for the President of the Philosophical 
Socicty to review at the end of his second year of office the work 
effected or attempted by his co-workers of the Society and to make 
remarks thereon, I shall therefore follow in the footsteps of my 
predecessors. 
The number of papers read during my term of office is not perhaps 
very large, their importance however is great because they are 
original. 
Most important perhaps among them has been the delightful 
account by Professor Seeley of his tour through the Colony in search 
of fossils. 
You may have had the pleasure of seeing in one of the English 
illustrated papers a reproduction of a mounted specimen of that 
extraordinary once-upon-a-time denizen of South Africa, ‘‘ Pariasaurus 
Bainii, ” a fossil skeleton of a gigantic salamander-like reptile forming 
a link to the Mammalia, and brought by Prof. Seeley from the Fraser- 
burg District. This skeleton, all entire, was exhibited at one of 
_the last conversaziones of the Royal Society. 
Many among you will also remember the fond hopes then enter- 
tained that the services of so eminent a man of science were to be 
secured for the Colony in connection with the establishment of a 
Geological Survey. Professor Seeley, however, was not to come 
back to us and do his own grand share of the scientific work still 
awaiting investigation in this country. Meanwhile in the districts 
of Fraserburg and Barkly West Dycinodont remains are burnt for 
lime-making. 
Professor Cleveland Abbe, of the U.S. Signal Service Weather 
Bureau, has delivered us an address on the Modern Weather Service, 
sa a A ory 
