10 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 



to be written. Probably they are not all known. Those unex- 

 plored regions of which we have been speaking are the very 

 places in which one might expect to find them, driven back into 

 the jungle by the advance of even the Malay notion of civiliza- 

 tion. And the fortunate man who discovers anything about 

 them should learn all he can at once, and put it down in 

 writing at once, before an irruption of the et orang putin," * or, 

 as I have heard M. Maclay call them, the " semut putin," t 

 coming into their retired haunts has the usual effect of causing 

 them to dwindle more and more, and get more and more absorbed 

 among the most sympathetic of their native neighbours, till in 

 a little time, they and all their peculiarities of speech, of manners 

 and customs, and ways of thought, disappear from off the face of 

 the earth. 



I have only mentioned a very few of those paths along which 

 the Society hopes to go in pursuit of knowledge. There is no 

 doubt about the fact that there is plenty of work to be done. 

 It remains for me just to indicate the means by which we hope 

 that some of it may get done. 



The first is by Association. The weak point in Mr. Logan 's 

 brave attempt was that he was alone responsible for the manage- 

 ment of the Journal. He seems to have been most heartily 

 supported at first, and he had a brilliant success ; but any one 

 may see from the table of contents that, as time went on, the 

 burden began to fall on him with a weight which no man out 

 here would be likely to sustain long. I do not know what it was 

 that made him give up the undertaking in 1862, but I should 

 think, from the look of the thing, that the want of sufficient 

 co-operation had something to do with it. And, as must happen 

 to an undertaking which depends, in the main, upon the energy 

 and enthusiasm of a single individual, when he gave up the 

 work it came utterly to an end. It is to be hoped that this 

 danger will be averted by our uniting ourselves in a Society. A 

 Society, if it starts with a good stock of vital power, and has a 

 definite end to accomplish, may expect to be long-lived. In- 

 dividuals are removed, and some lose the little interest they ever 

 had in the matter and drop away. This is to be looked for. 

 But others remain ; and new members are constantly enlisted 

 to till up the ranks. I think we have every reason to consider 

 that we do make our start with a considerable amount of vitality. 

 The number of members, as we have just heard, is now 

 nearly a hundred ; and considering how short a time has elapsed 



* " White men. " f " White ants. " 



