PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 7 



Mr. Eccleston Frederic Du Faur, f.r.g.s., was born 

 in London, in 1832, and educated at Harrow. He arrived 

 in Victoria when he was twenty-one, and after some years 

 of travel settled down in Sydney in 1863, where he was 

 engaged as a draftsman in the Lands Office, becoming 

 Chief Draftsman of the Department of Survey of Runs 

 and Occupation of Lands. In 1881 he retired from the 

 Government service and was engaged in business pursuits 

 for the following twenty years. Turning his attention to 

 the progress of geography, he organised in 1874 an expedi- 

 tion to ascertain the fate of Leichhardt, and another in 

 1877 to despatch Wilfrid Powell on a voyage of discovery 

 to New Britain. He assembled in 1883 a local Geographical 

 Society of which he was the first chairman, and which in 

 1885 arranged a party under Captain Everill to explore the 

 Fly River. This State owes much to the keen interest 

 which Mr. Du Faur took in Art. For he helped to form an 

 Academy of Art in 1871, and when this was succeeded by 

 the National Art Gallery, he became first the honorary 

 secretary and treasurer, and finally president. The high 

 position now reached by the Gallery is due largely to his 

 energy, administrative ability and taste. Mr. Du Faur 

 joined this Society in 1873. He contributed two papers to 

 our periodical, viz., "Re notable hailstorm of 17 November 

 1896 in parts of Parish of Gordon," (Journ. xxx, 1897, 

 pp. 361-368, pi. xxiii); "The effect of Polar Ice on the 

 weather," (Journ. xli, 1907, pp. 176-189, plates xiii-xvi. 

 He died in his eighty-fourth year, on 24th April, 1915, 

 leaving a family of one daughter and two sons. 



Science lost a staunch friend, and the State one of her 

 most worthy citizens when the Hon. Sir Henry Normand 

 MacLaurin died. He was born on September 10th, 1835, 

 at Kilconguhar in Fife, Scotland, where his father James 

 MacLaurin was a school master. As a boy he showed 



