The changes which have taken place of late years in the procedure at our Anniversary Meetings have materially altered the position in which the President finds himself on these occasions. Formerly the whole programme of reports, elections, and address was carried through in the afternoon, doubtless with the intention of leaving the evening free for a dinner, if the Fellows decided to have one. To that end elections, report, and address were taken simultaneously, with the result that the two latter were periodically held up by the declaration of the opening of ballots or of their results. From the President's point of view the procedure had its disadvantages and also its advantages. It was doubtless irksome to have to break off in the course of a carefully-prepared speech, but it must be remembered that a good part of that speech consisted of records of elections and deaths of Fellows, with obituary notices, all prepared by the Society's officers and entailing on the President no more mental effort than that required by the reading of them. Now it is far otherwise: the annual dinner is becoming only legendary, and the President's address occupies its place in the programme; nor is it now his office to refer to the state of the Society's boilers, or to note the setting up of a flagstaff on the Society's premises. He is left to his own resources, and, as I myself can vouch, is torn between the apprehension of producing a discourse bearing too close a likeness to the general run of former addresses, and that of straying into side issues of small practical value.