I am conscious that my unanimous election to the office on which I to-night enter, was in nowise owing to the scientific qualifications you supposed me to possess, but to your desire, as Members of the late Philosophical Institute, to evince a grateful sense of Her Majesty's recent condescension, by thus making Her Representative your first President under the new style you have been permitted to assume.

In this view I felt I had no right to decline the proffered compliment, nor to shrink from the duties its acceptance imposed, however unequal I knew myself to be to their efficient discharge.

"Parcus scientiarumet infrequens,"

if I may be allowed so to paraphrase the confession of Horace, it is indeed with the greatest diffidence that I rise to deliver the Inaugural Address expected from me on this occasion, and to treat of scientific questions in the presence of many so much more conversant with their details than I can pretend to be.

Most especially am I sensible of my unfitness to succeed one who has achieved so high a reputation in the scientific world as my predecessor in the Presidential Chair—Ferdinand Mueller—a man whose enthusiasm as a botanist is only surpassed by his industry as a writer, evidenced, despite the official demands on his time, by the publication, during his presidency, of several most useful works, of which I need only instance his "Monographs of the Tropical Eucalypti, of the Australian Acacias, and of the Genus Eremophila;" his "Enumeration of the Plants collected on the exploring expeditions of Gregory and of Babbage;" his invaluable "Fragmenta Phytographić Australić," containing already the diagnoses of no less than 600 new or undescribed Australian plants; and above all his first sheets of the "Flora of Victoria," a work which, when completed, will redound equally to the credit of the author, and of the Colony at whose expense it has been given to the world.

As through his zeal and perseverance, moreover, the Philosophical Institute has, during the past year, obtained a "local habitation," as well as a change of name, and may now, therefore, be considered an established institution of the land, the present seems a fitting opportunity for me, when thus addressing you, to examine how far it has hitherto accomplished the obicets for which it was founded, and to consider by the light of past experience how its operations may in future be most beneficially conducted.

These objects were declared in 1855 (when two infant projects of similar nature were amalgamated into the present Society), "to embrace the whole field of science, with special reference to the development of the natural resources of the country," the mode of effecting them having at the same time been defined to be "by original researches conducted by members, and original papers read and discussed at meetings."

Royal Society of Victoria