36 
The Emu. 
president's address. 
Colonel Legge, R.A., F.Z.S., &c., the president, not being 
able to attend, forwarded the following letter and his address : — 
HoBART, 24/10/01. 
Dear Sir, — In sending you my address, which you have kindly consented 
to read, I must express my sincere regret at not being present at the 
inaugural meeting of our Union. 
I trust and wish heartily that you may have a very successful meeting, 
and that it will be the beginning of a sure and strong foundation for the 
Union, whose labours I hope to see appreciated in the old country. — I am, 
very faithfully yours, 
W. V. LEGGE. 
Col. Legge's address was as follows : — 
In thanking the members of our newly-established Ornith- 
ologists' Union for the honour they have done me by my 
election as its first president, it is my privilege to-day to warmly 
congratulate those Australasian ornithologists who have thus 
banded together and successfully launched this Union on the 
sea of their hopes. In doing this I also express the earnest 
desire that our brotherhood will be able to advance the science 
of ornithology in Australia to the same extent that the parent 
institution, the British Ornithologists' Union, has done in 
England and Europe, and that the Union will take an honoured 
place by the side of the latter and live to see its labours 
amply appreciated in the old country. 
The members of the Australasian Ornithologists' Union have 
decided to give to the world the result of their labours through 
the medium of a periodical styled TJie Emu, thus following the 
example of the British Ornithologists' Union, whose well-known 
and valued journal, TJie Ibis, has through a long series of years 
done so much to advance the science of ornithology in England. 
We should, therefore, realize at the outset of our career the fact 
that the measure of our success will assuredly depend on the 
character of our publication both as regards subject material and 
illustrations, and we should make this idea the mainspring of 
all our work. The British Union has depended on the excellent 
reputation of its journal for its existence, and our Union will 
have to similarly depend on TJie Eviu. 
At this period of my remarks it may not be out of place to 
comment on the causes which led to the establishment of the 
British Ornithologists' Union, and this can best be done by 
quoting from Dr. Sclater's preface to the first volume of The 
Ibis, of which he was editor. He says : — 
*' For some years past a few gentlemen attached to the study of 
ornithology, most of them more or less intimately connected 
with the University of Cambridge, had been in the habit of 
meeting together once a year, or oftener, to exhibit to one 
another the various objects of interest which had occurred to 
them, and to talk over both former and future plans of adding 
to their knowledge of this branch of natural history. 
