92 THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST: 
During the year the Club has, as usual, fulfilled to a certain 
extent the objects for which it was founded ; our meetings and 
excursions have been well attended You will learn with 
pleasure of the formation of a Naturalists’ Club at Armidale. 
This Club has been affiliated with our Society, and has just 
completed a successful year and is showing signs of a very 
healthy vigour. 
This year has been marked by an unusual activity in the 
publication of Natural History literature of a direct bearing 
on Australia. In September, 1906, an admirable account of 
the fishes of N.S. Wales appeared from the pen of Mr. D. G. 
Stead, and I understand is proving very useful in the State. 
Some two months back we were delighted with the publication 
of “ Australian Insects,” by Mr. Froggatt. Mr. Froggatt is to 
be heartily congratulated on this far from mean effort to 
popularise Entomology in Australia. This work will stimulate 
many to a study of our insects, and will fulfil a long-felt want 
amongst Hntomologists and nature students generally. We 
hope that, beginning from this introduction to Australian 
Insects in general, we may in due course be furnished with 
more detailed and extended works on the various orders of 
insects. We all join in wishing Mr. Froggatt the best results 
from his travels abroad in other countries. 
I may also be permitted to draw your attention to another 
publication that will very shortly be put before you, namely, 
‘“A Guide to the Study of Australian Butterflies,” by your 
President of last year, Mr. W.J. Rainbow. This work should be 
a boon to those who study that popular branch of Hntomology, 
the butterflies, giving as it will many new notes on their life 
histories, as well as collecting into the limits of a single work 
those accounts that have already seen the light of publication. 
I may be allowed to refer to the important scientific facts 
‘that are likely to result from the trip of Messrs. Hedley and 
McCulloch to Murray Island, in the Torres Straits, and I am 
sure we heartily wish these gentlemen suitable weather con- 
ditions, and an abundance of material from their trip. 
It was with very great regret that I heard of the death of 
our Vice-President, Mr. F. HE. Grant, who died in the prime of 
his life and in the midst of important scientific investigations. 
It was my good fortune to become acquainted with Mr. Grant 
very shortly after his arrival in Sydney, and we enjoyed many 
conversations on scientific subjects of mutual interest. We 
deplore his death, especially at a time when his presence was 
required in the investigation of certain portions of our marine 
fauna in which so much activity is being displayed at present. 
The main theme on which I wish to speak to you before 
vacating this chair is ‘ The History of Papilio wgeus: Its life, 
yariation and distribution.” JI have chosen this single species, 
