676 
PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
present Picture House. A circular was issued asking for 
donations of money and specimens. Presentations poured in 
apace, and cases were ordered. The purchase of specimens 
began on January 5th, 1825, and on May 9th the Museum was 
opened for visitors. ( Space was so limited that the first annual 
meeting had to be held at the Guildhall, under the chairmanship 
of Sir James Smith, who was then elected the first President. 
In the autumn of 1826 a second room was hired on the other 
side of the court, and there, on December 5th, 1826, the second 
annual meeting was held under the same President. Owing to 
bad health, this was the last general meeting of the Museum 
that Sir James was able to attend, but he continued to be its 
President until his death in March, 1828."’ 
The succeeding Presidents were chosen from among his 
friends, viz.: — 1828-33, Mr. Dawson Turner, F.R.S., of 
Yarmouth; and 1833-7, the Rev. William Kirby, whose 
portrait (formerly the property of the Claydon Book Club) 
hangs over the entrance to the picture gallery in this 
Museum. 26 Dr. James Smith annually spent a few days in 
Ipswich, and in 1791 the Rev. W. Kirby had consulted him 
and T. J. Woodward about starting a Museum there,'" 7 but that 
Museum was not opened till a short time before Kirby’s death 
in 1850. 
In January, 1830, Mr. Dawson Turner proposed that the 
Committee of Norwich Museum should consider a plan for 
the publication of a Natural History of the County of 
Norfolk, a work in which he and other Yarmouth Naturalists 
were much interested. This was eventually carried into effect 
many years later in the Transactions of our Norfolk and 
Norwich Naturalists’ Society, founded in 1869 86 ; and has been 
still further advanced by the “ Flora ” published by our society 
this year. 85 The “ Natural History of Yarmouth,” brought out 
by the brothers Paget in 1834, only comprised the country 
within a radius of ten miles from that town. 21 
Sir James Smith’s friendships were unaffected by differences 
of religious views. He and Lady Smith were Unitarians 
worshipping at the Octagon Chapel ; John Pitchford was a 
