ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 51 
In conclusion I thank you for the kind support you have given 
me in the Chair during the past year, and for the patience you 
have shewn in listening to this long and I fear, wearisome address. 
Tt is longer than I meant it to be, but not long enough I fear to 
include all the scientific work which has been done in the Colony 
during the past year. It now only remains for your President 
in vacating this chair to welcome heartily the incoming President 
Professor Warren, to ask for him a continuance of that kindly 
support which we have always given our Chairman in the past, 
and to express the hope that in the coming year our Society may 
be even more successful than it has been in the past. 
ON THE IMPORTANCE AND NATURE OF THE 
OCEANIC LANGUAGES. 
By Sipney H. Ray, Memb. Anthrop. Inst. Gt. Brit. & Ireland. 
[Read before the Royal Society of N.S. Wales, June 1, 1892. ] 
I.—The linguistic value of the Oceanic Languages. 
Tue languages of Oceania afford material of much value to the 
Ethnologist in the discussion of some of the most interesting and 
intricate problems of comparative Philology. Whether we regard 
the number and variety of dialects, theic mutual relationship, 
origin, or influence upon each other, we find in the island region 
an assemblage of facts to which no other family (or families) of 
speech can show an exact parallel. 
In America or Africa, for example, the number of languages 
and dialects is perhaps fully as great as in Oceania, but the 
phenomena presented are of a different nature. We there find 
languages spoken in extensive regions by large communities. 
