g PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
John Smith, C.M.G., M.L.C., LL.D., M.D., our former President, 
our appreciation of his life and labours, and our heartfelt sympathy 
with his widow in her great bereavement. 
It is, however, only fitting that I should give a somewhat fuller 
account of the work which he did for us and for the public at large, 
and especially, as I said on that occasion, since but very few appear 
to know how much the Colony is indebted to him. Quiet, unobtru- 
sive, conscientious workers, such as he, especially when they are 
unpaid for their self-imposed and philanthropic labours, seldom 
receive during their lifetime a just recognition of their deserts, : 
and not always after their death. 
Professor Smith was born in Scotland, about the year 1821, 
and was educated at Marischal College, in the University of Aber- 
deen, where he took the degrees of M.A. and M.D. After taking 
his degrees, he for some five years carried on the chemistry class 
in Marischal College during the illness of Prof. Clarke. 4 
When the University of Sydney was endowed and incorporated, 
a Committee was appointed in London, consisting of Sir John 7 
Herschel, F.R.S., Bart., Sir George Airey, Astronomer Royal, 
Prof. Malden, of University College, London, and others, to select . 
Professors for the Chairsof classics and mathematics, and one for 3 
certain portions of science. This Committee made the three ap- 
pointments in 1852, and Dr. Smith was selected as the first : 
Professor of chemistry and experimental physics ; and he retained | 
the latter portion of the original Chair from the time of his arrival = 
in October, 1852, until his death in October, 1885. In addition, 
he was for many years Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. He | 
was a Fellow of the Chemical Society of London, and an honorary 4 
member of the Royal Society of Victoria. 
Soon after landing here, in 1853, he was appointed to the Board 
of National Education, and remained one of its most prominent 
and useful members until 1866, when the Board was superseded 
by the Council of Education, constituted under the Public Schools Ag 
Act, to which he was gazetted as one of the first members, and of 
which he was nine times elected President. During his period of 
