Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait121878roya).pdf/181

 THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.

Gentlemen, if it had not been announced to you, both in the notices convening this meeting and in the public prints, that the President would address the Society this evening, I should only too gladly remain silent; being satisfied that in the two Reports to which you have just listened all that need be said of the past year has been said. For the subject, as it seems to me, of an address from the President of such a Society as this, at the end of his year of office, should be a review of the history of the Society during that year. But when saw the exhaustive Report which the Hon. Secretary had drawn up for the Council, and which has just been presented to this meeting, I felt, like "the needy knifegrinder," that I had no story to tell. Very little remains for me to say except to congratulate the Society upon its present position. It is about a year old. I am not quite sure whether the day of the first preliminary meeting, the 4th of November 1877, or January 21st in 1878, the meeting at which Rules were made and Officers appointed, should be called the birthday of the Society: probably the latter; and in that case it has not yet quite reached its first anniversary. But the baby is alive and well. It has survived some of the dangers of infancy; it has not been smothered by kindness, nor left to perish from neglect; it has not been starved, as the Treasurer's report shews; and it has shewn itself capable of performing most of the functions which were expected of it.

We must all feel that the Report of the Council gives sufficient ground for the opinion that the Society is vigorous. Nine meetings held in the year:—twenty-two papers read:— one number of the Journal published, and a second almost ready for publication:—a library commenced:—160 members enrolled and last, though not least, a balance at the Bank: all these are healthy signs, and give us reason to hope that the Society is well established, and has a long and useful career before it.

Some of the papers that have been read are of very great value. I may mention as an instance Mr. Maclay's account of his long wanderings among the wild tribes of the Peninsula. He has fixed with a precision which only personal investigation on the spot could secure, both the habitat of each division of these scattered tribes, and the relation in which they stand to one another, and to other races. Every one. who reads his most interesting paper must, I think, come to the same conclusions as Mr. Maclay himself, that, though