No. 62.— 1909.] 



PROCEEDINGS. 



301 



the Chairman." It is proposed that in future the Chairman 

 should be armed with an hour glass which will not mark hours but 

 minutes ; that he should have two of them ; and that he should 

 start a full one when a Member begins to speak in discussing any 

 Paper that has been read, and that, if he considers it advisable, he 

 should, when the five minutes have elapsed, call the attention 

 of the speaker to the fact. If, on the other hand, the speaker is 

 enthralling his audience, it will be the duty of the Chairman, in the 

 interests of that audience, to allow him to speak for one, two, or 

 three consecutive five minutes without disturbing him. The pro- 

 posal was brought forward by, I think, Dr. Nell, who, no doubt, 

 will presently speak in seconding the motion, and who will give you 

 his opinion on the subject. It seems to me that, provided that the 

 discretionary power to prolong the period of five minutes is vested 

 in a Chairman with a reasonable amount of wisdom and discretion, 

 it should make for the convenience of all concerned. There are 

 very few Papers in which it is not possible to raise the few points 

 you want answered by the lecturer in a speech of five minutes. 



4. Dr. Nell said that it gave him very great pleasure to second 

 the proposal. He thought they would find that most of the Papers 

 prepared were by men who had studied the subject pretty closely , 

 and no subsequent speaker had anything more to do than supple- 

 ment a fact, correct an inaccuracy, or dispute some minor argu- 

 ment in the Paper. All this could easily be done in five minutes. 

 He did not propose on that occasion to take more than a minute in 

 seconding the proposal. 



The new rule was then unanimously adopted. 



5. The Honorary Secretary read the Resolution passed at a 

 Meeting of the Council of the Society on July 14, regarding the 

 death of Mr. C. M. Fernando : — 



" That the Council of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic 

 Society wishes to express its sympathy and condolence with the 

 family of the late Mr. C. M. Fernando, M.A., LL.M., and to 

 express its sense of the loss which it has sustained by his death , 

 and records the following : — 



"By the death of Mr. C. M. Fernando, M.A., LL.M., Senior 

 Crown Counsel, Ceylon, this Society has lost one of its most valued 

 members. He joined the Society in 1889, and was a member of 

 the Council from 1896, and at his death was the senior Member. 

 He was a regular attendant at Meetings ; and to the part which 

 he took in its discussions and to his contributions, the Proceedings 

 of Meetings and the Journals of this Society owe much of their 

 interest and value. 



4 ' To the Journals of this Society Mr. Fernando contributed the 

 following Papers : — 



"(I) The Music of Ceylon— No. 45, 1894. 

 " (2) The Inauguration of the King in Ancient Ceylon- 

 No. 47, 1896. 



" (3) A Note on the Palaeography of Ceylon — No. 55, 1904. 

 " (4) Two Old Sinhalese Swords— No. 56, 1905." 



