PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS, 
By Proressor Liversiper, F.R.S., ke. 
[Delivered to the Royal Society of N.S. W., 5 May, 1886.] 
On this the 65th anniversary of the foundation of the Royal 
Society of New South Wales, it devolves upon me to address you, 
and to thus continue what has hitherto been the annual custom 
since the first formation of the Society. It is true that there have 
been breaks, but the years in which they have occurred are few 
and far between. For many reasons I should have been glad to 
have been relieved, but I am afraid that it would have appeared like 
shirking the duties and responsibilities of the high office to which 
you elected me, after having enjoyed the honors of the position. 
Tt has been more than once suggested by previous Presidents 
that the custom should be discontinued, since the Council has often 
failed to secure the services of competent members to fill the 
Presidential Chair, simply on account of their inability to find 
time to prepare the expected annual address. For my own part, 
I can thoroughly sympathize with them; and as a compromise 
between the usual address upon scientific matters to which you 
have hitherto been accustomed, and none at all, I venture to 
bring before you a few remarks upon certain matters which may 
perhaps be not altogether devoid of interest to you, inasmuch as, 
with one or two exceptions, they may be regarded as belonging 
more or less completely to the domestic affairs of the Society. 
In the first instance, it is my melancholy duty to place on record 
a brief notice of such of our members as have been removed from 
our midst during the past year. 
At the meeting held in November last we expressed our grief 
for the loss we had sustained in the removal of the late Hon. Prof. 
