PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 3 
office Prof. Smith took the opportunity to effect many improve- 
ments, and the Colony is indebted to him for several of the best 
features of the present system of Education. 
He devoted himself to the work, and undertook duties of a most 
laborious character— he was in fact during this period the chief 
administrative officer of the Educational system of the Colony. 
The old officials under the late Board of Education all unite in 
bearing testimony to this, in speaking in terms of regret for the 
loss of their late President, of his many good qualities and great 
consideration for those under him—as one of them states, he was 
‘“‘the last to censure but the first to forgive”’—and of the great in- 
debtedness of the Colony to his labours. 
He spent years of self-sacrificing toil without emolument and 
without hope of reward. The work was done so quietly and unob 
trusively that he could not have been actuated either by hope of 
praise nor of social distinction, the motive being a real love for the 
work and of his fellows. 
One or more afternoons and most of his evenings in each week 
were spent at the offices of the Council, transacting its business and 
arranging for future action. He in fact performed gratuitously 
the work which would have devolved upon the Minister for Public 
Instruction had one then existed. 
As a mark of the value set on his business qualities, it may not 
be out of place here to mention that in 1864 Dr. Smith was chosen 
a Director of the Australian Mutual Provident Society, and was 
for many years its Chairman. 
In 1867 he was President of the Royal Commission appointed 
to inquire into the supply of Water to Sydney and its Suburbs. 
From his position he necessarily had much to do with the direction 
and methods of investigation followed, and especially in the 
scientific questions relating to the sources of the water supply, 
and the collection and chemical examination of the samples, 
The labours of the Commission in examining witnesses, visiting 
the catchment areas, obtaining records of rainfall, flow of rivers, 
