president’s address. 
I 
the kind hospitality of the Rev. J. L. and Mrs. Le Pelley, a most 
enjoyable day seems to have been spent by all those who were 
fortunate enough to have time and leisure to participate in the 
excursion. I entirely agree with my predecessor in this chair, that 
it would bo a thousand pities if these summer outings were 
discontinued on account of an apparent lack of interest on the part 
of tho members at largo. It has occurred to me that increased 
intorest might be given to these excursions if it were made an 
invariable rule, that some able botanist, well acquainted with tho 
locality, should accompany tho party on each occasion, and point 
out to them tho chief floral treasures of the district. Under the 
inspiriting influence of such a pioneer, some real work might be 
done, whilst botany would be very likely to acquire a number of 
fresh recruits. Botanical zeal is a highly contagious quality, and 
to use tho words of Thomas Carlyle, I have in my mind’s eye 
a certain author, or rather individual, who twenty-five or thirty 
years ago was the most enthusiastic and indefatigable of botanists, 
and who derived his botanical ardour, exclusively, from tho 
botanical proclivities of a school chum. 
In the late Surgeon-General Francis Day, who died on the 10th 
of July, 1889, our Society has lost a distinguished member. 
I)r. Day visited Norwich at the Fisheries’ Exhibition here in 1881, 
and then became a member of this Society, and continued to take 
great interest in its work, contributing a paper to its * Transactions’ 
in November, 188G, on some remarkable Eels from Sahara Mere. 
Mr. Day also evinced his interest in the Society by presenting us 
with his magnificent work on tho ‘ Fishes of India.’ It is not 
necessary here to mention all the works which he has left as 
mementos of his great knowledge of ichthyology; but the one 
which will be most generally useful will certainly be his ‘ British 
Fishes,’ finished in 1884. which will long remain the standard 
work on that subject. Mr. Day was conscious of the fatal nature 
of the painful malady from which ho suffered, and made during 
his life a judicious disposal of his books and specimens. Only 
two months before his death, Mr. Southwell received a letter from 
him, which, although his daughter wrote that he was “too ill to 
