ADDRESS 
AT THE OPENING OF THE SESSION 1883-4. 
BY THE REV. PROFESSOR CHAPMAN, M.A. 
President. 
Ladies and Gentlemen, — 
Having been placed by your kind suffrages in the 
honourable position I now occupy, it gives me much pleasure 
to meet you at this, the opening of a new session, and I take the 
opportunity of congratulating you on the prosperity of the Insti- 
tution, as seen in the growing interest with which the lectures during 
the past year were attended, and in the more ample accommodation 
provided by the erection of the new Museum and Art Gallery. 
We must, I think, all feel under obligation to my predecessor in 
the chair, and those other gentlemen who with him spared no 
pains to render our improvements and enlargements as complete as 
possible ; and it is earnestly to be hoped that the amount still 
required to be raised to cover the cost of these valuable additions 
to our property will, by some wise arrangement on the part of the 
Council, sustained by the zeal of all our members, be soon forth- 
coming. 
The steady advance which of late years has characterized the 
attendance on our lectures and discussions, while possibly connected 
in some degree with local interests, is nevertheless, I presume, to 
be regarded as an expression of the wider and more deeply-rooted 
hold which literary and scientific subjects have taken on the public 
mind. The founders of this and similar institutions have left 
behind them not only venerable names, but also a very numerous 
progeny. It was their honour to be animated with the Scientific 
Spirit which has now come in full measure upon multitudes. The 
distinctiveness of manifestation in the present instance is connected 
