ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING. 30th March, 1955. The Eightieth Annual General Meeting was held in the Hall of Science House, Gloucester Street, Sydney, on Wednesday, 30th March, 1955. Dr. F. V. Mercer, President, occupied the chair. The minutes of the Seventy-ninth Annual General Meeting, 31st March, 1954, were read and confirmed. Presidential Address. It is with mixed feelings that I deliever the eightieth Presidential Address of the Linnean Society of New South Wales. One part of me is elated at the privilege and lionour of being, and continuing to be for another year, your President. Another part of me is depressed by the problems which face the Society in the future. The Society came into being in 1874 to meet the scientific needs of the natural historians of that period. At that time scientific interests were concerned primarily with collecting and describing the fauna, flora and rock formations of what was a relatively recently discovered continent. There was a real need for an organization which would meet and foster this kind of interest. ' As a consequence the Linnean Society was founded "for the cultivation and study of Natural History in all its branches". Like a new species or organism in a favourable environment, and for much the same reasons, the Society, despite economic depressions and wars, flourished and fulfllled the needs which led to its formation. Since about 1930 the membership of the Society has remained stationary, perhaps even falling during the last few years, and, if the attendance at the monthly meetings measures interests, then the Society would appear to be failing to maintain the interest of its members. Yet the scientific population of the community shows no such trend. A dozen reasons and platitudes could be given to account for these trends, but the one which seems to me to be the most important is the changing emphasis in the study of natural history. With almost frightening rapidity during the last decade or so the emphasis has shifted from the general to the specific. The specialist has replaced or is replacing the older type of natural historian. No longer are we classified as biologists or geologists, but we have become phytomorphologists, gene-ecologists or geophysicists and so on. What, then, is the role and purpose of a society such as this in an age of specialism? This Society, along with others of its kind in the world, must find a solution to the problem of specialization. Like an organism when the environment changes, a society must adapt to the new conditions or be eclipsed. To me the study of natural history is the study of evolution. Much of the specialization current in present-day biology arises from a difference between the descriptive approach to evolution as illustrated by Darwin's work, and the experimental approach of Mendel. Somehow this Society must achieve a synthesis between these approaches and provide a meeting ground between the systematist, the comparative morphologist, the compara-tive anatomist, the ecologist on the one hand and the geneticist, biochemist and physiologist on the other. It is almost an axiom that financial crisis and scientific societies go together. No member of this society should assume from observing a credit of a few hundred pounds in the balance sheet that the financial state of the society is healthy. Let me mention a 'few facts. Once we were able to support four Linnean Macleay Fellows and a Linnean Macleay Bacteriologist; now there are two Fellows, and this year will see the end of the Bacteriologist. Falling returns from investments and the falling value of
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