No. 61.— 1908.] 



PROCEEDINGS. 



President's Address. 



5. The President (Mr. Ferguson) : It is my duty and pleasure 

 to return thanks on behalf of the Office-Bearers of the Society 

 for their unanimous election on the present occasion ; and in doing 

 so I would offer a very few remarks, as President, by way of con- 

 gratulation on the steadily improving position of the Society so 

 far as Membership is concerned, while expressing thanks for the 

 very sympathetic address on this point of His Excellency. 



The addition of 45 new Members in the past year brings our list 

 up to 253, a larger number than was ever before on the roll of the 

 Society. 



Nor is there any lack of interesting Papers. Seven were read 

 during 1907, while seven more are in the hands of the Council, 

 and will probably be read and printed during the present year. 

 I may mention that while, with the aid of the Government 

 Printer, the Members have lately received Journal No. 58, the 

 issue of No. 59 will follow very shortly. There is only one of the 

 past year's Papers to which I would allude, that of Mr. J. Pole 

 on " Prehistoric Stones." It is merely to mention that since it 

 was written Mr. Bruce Foote and Dr. Seligmann have both recog- 

 nized the interest attaching to Mr. Pole's discoveries, as, indeed, 

 the Messrs. Sarasin had done while in Ceylon. 



Last year we, as a Council, if not Society, deprecated the reprint- 

 ing by Government of Wijesinha's translation of the Mahdwansa, 

 pending the appearance of Dr. Geiger's revised text ; but as nothing 

 has been heard of the latter, and there is an urgent call for copies 

 of the English translation of the Mahdwansa, none being in stock, 

 the printing of an ad interim edition would seem to be necessary. 



We are thankful to Government also for sanctioning the resump- 

 tion of the use of diacritical type in printing the Mahdwansa and 

 learned Papers of the Society. 



We are all congratulating ourselves on the approaching comple- 

 tion of the new wing of the Museum. 



We have specially to thank His Excellency and his Govern- 

 ment for the vote which has made it possible to set agoing 

 a full and final scientific investigation of the Veddas, as so 

 earnestly desired by Professor Virchow more than ^ quarter of 

 a century ago and by British anthropologists ever since. Dr. 

 and Mrs. Seligmann have now been for some time engaged on 

 the task. I may mention that in a private letter from the 

 Doctor, dated the 4th instant, he reports satisfactory progress 

 and the garnering of a good deal of new information, and how 

 Mrs. Seligmann' s presence has added much to the success of the 

 expedition. Dr. Seligmann also confirms his promise to give 

 an evening's " talk " before our Society ere he leaves the Island, 

 and he mentions that some of his coloured (apart from ordinary) 

 photographs have been successful. 



There is only one thing more I would venture to mention 

 before I sit down, and that is the poverty of our Society in 

 the face of much useful work devolving upon it. Our Society 

 has existed for sixty-two years, and it has done a good deal 

 of investigation that would otherwise have devolved on the 



