Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/9



ADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—I have the honour to address you a second time from this chair—an honour I feel all the more keenly because I really did not anticipate being asked to keep better men out of it any longer, and because there is so much evidence that the Society is taking year by year a more prominent place among learned bodies.

My duty is to survey our last year's work, and that is as difficult as it is pleasing. By this I mean to say that so much good work has been accomplished, that it is really no easy task to summarise it satisfactorily, partly on account of its magnitude, partly on account of its excellence. The papers of the session and the publications are duly set forth in the annual report, though, personally, I demur to the classification there adopted, which appears to relegate to a minor order of importance papers which are short as distinguished from those that are long.

Most of the papers have been published in the Society's official organ,, while some have found a home elsewhere. It is a noteworthy fact that more attention has been paid this year to custom and belief than has hitherto been the case; and, as this has been my own especial department of inquiry, I cannot help expressing my pleasure at it—a pleasure, however, damped to a considerable degree