President's Address. 
33 
1879.] _ 
Mr. H. Beverley was appointed a Trustee of the Indian Museum, 
in place of Dr. T. It. Lewis, resigned on leaving India. 
October 31s£, Ordinary Meeting. 
The publication of Lieut. R. Temple’s Grammar of the S. Andaman 
language was declined from want of funds. 
November 28 tit. Ordinary Meeting. 
In reply to a letter from Messrs. Newman and Co., asking if the Society 
had promised to take copies of Mr. Leonard’s Index to the Journal, they 
were ordered to be informed that if the Index were published, the Society 
would be prepared to take copies to the value of Its. 500, provided it meets 
with the approval of the Council. 
The Mali and Beaver were ordered to receive a temporary increase 
of 1 Rupee each per mensem for November and December. 
The Peesidestt then delivered the following address— 
^resident's D DRESS. 
The close of the period for which you have done me the honour of 
entrusting me with the Pi’esidency of your Society brings with it the occa¬ 
sion of reviewing briefly some of the incidents of the past year, and of 
offering a few remarks on some of the scientific questions which have 
from time to time attracted the attention of our members. In the great 
Societies of Europe, where the subjects discussed are of cosmopolitan 
interest, it is not an unusual proceeding to review the progress of human 
thought generally or of the particular branch to which each Society devotes 
itself, during the course of the preceding twelve months, but situated as we 
are, at a distance from the greater centres of scientific activity, we shall 
best do service to the general cause by confining ourselves to the area of 
the continent from which our Society derives its name, and more especially 
to the country in which we live. 
To review the various discoveries made during the year, and to afford 
anything like an adequate sketch of their scope and meaning, is indeed a 
task far beyond the powers of any individual. The year commenced with 
that marvellous triumph of mechanical resource, the liquefaction, simulta¬ 
neously and independently by two different chemists, of the only gases which 
had hitherto resisted all attempts to induce them to change their gaseous 
state, and terminated with Mr. Norman Lockyer’s spectroscopic analyses of 
the metals, analyses so singular as to have led to the announcement, more 
sensational than accurate, that the decomposition of bodies hitherto sup¬ 
posed to be elementary had been effected, and even in the columns of news¬ 
papers to the suggestion that the old alchemist’s dream of transmutation 
had come true. Great additions have been made in the course of the 
