ADDRESS 



ON 



SOME PROBLEMS OF THE SEA. 

 By Professor W. A. Herdman, F.R.S., President. 



(Read 26th October, 1906.) 



I beg to acknowledge, with proper gratitude, the 

 honour you have done me in electing me once more to the 

 Presidential chair of our Society. You are aware that 

 at the end of the present session we attain our majority. 

 Our meeting next January will be the twenty-first since 

 the Society was founded; and, as the senior surviving 

 past-president, it was perhaps appropriate that I should 

 be asked to re-occupy the chair for the occasion. As I 

 desire to ask the Council to allow me later in the session 

 to arrange a suitable celebration of our twenty-first year 

 of work, I shall not occupy your time further now with 

 remarks which may be more appropriate to that occasion. 



I have already given two Presidential Addresses to 

 this Society, and on thinking of what might be suitable 

 matters to occupy you with on this third occasion I 

 decided that it might be well, in place of taking one 

 specific subject, to deal with two or three general 

 questions of wide interest to all biologists, I hope, and 

 possibly to others outside our bounds. That leads me to 

 ask — Why are there not more within our bounds? This 

 Society is too small. When we consider the wide scope 

 and the deep interest of biological investigations, and 

 their practical importance to mankind in connection with 

 food supply and the public health — in addition to many 

 industries, such as that of the oriental pearl, which 

 enriches man by enhancing the beauty of woman —when 



