ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. . 



By A. Liversidge, m.a., f.r.s., Professor of Chemistry, 



University of Sydney. 



[Delivered to the Royal Society of N.S.W., May 7, 1890.'] 



This being the Sixty-ninth Anniversary Meeting of the Society, 

 it again devolves upon me to address you upon the affairs of 

 this institution and certain other matters, in which we are all 

 probably more or less interested. I do not intend to give you 

 any general review of the scientific progress made during the past 

 year, since that, for many reasons, appears to me to be unnecessary. 

 In the first instance this is a Society for all branches of science, 

 and a review of all of them, even if I were capable of writing 

 such, would necessarily be very fragmentary and incomplete ; it 

 would be of too one-sided a character if I were to confine myself 

 to Chemistry alone, and would only appeal to a few of our mem- 

 bers ; moreover, we have at this time of the year the advantage 

 of reading the annual summaries of scientific progress recently 

 published in Europe and America, and which arrive shortly 

 before our annual meeting. These addresses and scientific sum- 

 maries are usually the work of the most eminent men, each a 

 leader in his own department of science, and delivered to the 

 members of societies who are also specialists ; hence anything I 

 could do in that way would naturally fall far short of what is. 

 already accessible to you. I shall therefore content myself by 

 drawing attention to a few matters which may more particularly 

 concern ourselves ; the changes which have taken place during the 

 past year, the work done by our own Society, some of the work 

 it should do, and similar topics. 



The number of members on the roll on April 30, 1889 was 471. 

 Twelve new members have been elected during the past year ; we 

 have however lost by death three ordinary, one honorary, and one 



Jl— May 7, 1890. 



