THE PRESIDENT'S ADDEESS. 



Gentlemen, if it had not been announced to you, both in 

 the notices convening- this meeting and in the public prints, 

 that the President would address the Society this evening, 

 I should only too gladly remain silent ; being satisfied that 

 in the two Reports to which you have just listened aLl that 

 need be said of the past year has been said. For the sub- 

 ject, as it seems to me, of an address from the President of 

 such a Society as this, at the end of his year of office, should 

 be a review of the history of the Society during that year. 

 But when I saw the exhaustive Report which the Hon. Se- 

 cretary had drawn up for the Council, and which has just 

 been presented to this meeting, I felt, like " the needy 

 knifegrinder," that I had no story to tell. Very little re- 

 mains for me to say except to congratulate the Society upon 

 its present position. It is about a year old. I am not quite 

 sure whether the day of the first preliminary meeting, the 

 4 tli of November 1877, or January 21st in 1878, the meeting 

 at which Rules were made and Officers appointed, should be 

 called the birthday of the Society : probably the latter ; and 

 in that case it has not yet quite reached its first anniversary* 

 But the baby is alive and well. It has survived some of the 

 dangers of infancy ; it has not been smothered by kindness, 

 nor left to perish from neglect ; it has not been starved, as the 

 Treasurer's report shews ; and it has shewn itself capable of 

 performing most of the functions which were expected of it. 



We must all feel that the Report of the Council gives 

 sufficient ground for the opinion that the Society is vigorous. 

 Nine meetings held in the year : — twenty-two papers read : — 

 one number of the Journal published, and a second almost 

 ready for publication : — a library commenced : — 160 mem- 

 bers enrolled : — and last, though not least, a balance at the 

 Bank : all these are healthy signs, and give us reason to 

 hope that the Societ}' is well established, and has a long and 

 useful career before it. 



Some of the papers that have been read are of very great 

 value. I may mention as an instance Mr. Maclay's account 

 of his long wanderings among the wild tribes of the Penin- 

 sula. He has fixed with a precision which only personal in- 

 vestigation on the spot could secure, both the habitat of each 

 division of these scattered tribes, and the relation in which 

 they stand to one another, and to other races. Every one 

 who reads his most interesting paper must, I think, come to 

 the same conclusions as Mr. Maclay himself, that, though 



